The Sibos Insider Blog </strong>provides inspiring insights from financial industry experts and influencers. The blogs provide informed thought-leadership on a range of topics. The opinions expressed in these blogs reflect the personal views of the author and not their organisation, Sibos, or SWIFT.</em></p> During last year's Sibos, I prowled the halls of ExCel London determined to find the latest API-enabled, cutting-edge, value-creating solutions for corporate clients. I was surprised at how little there was on offer considering the obvious benefits that APIs can bring to real-time payments.</p> I've long been involved in corporate digital channels, as a banker, solution provider, and research analyst. My first "Aha" moment in APIs came when I joined MuleSoft in 2014 (acquired by Salesforce in 2018) as Financial Services Industry Director. I quickly learned how banks and insurance companies used APIs for back-office integration, overcoming the limitations of legacy technology. I then slowly began to discover the possibilities that real-time, on-demand external APIs can offer for enabling connectivity between banks, clients, and solution providers.</p> Despite my discovery, I was surprised to hear from banks that there wasn't a clear business case to justify building commercial accounts and payments APIs. Those conversations prompted me to dig deeper into corporate client demand and to look for market-leading institutions who overcame legacy technology limitations, insufficient knowledge of APIs, and supposed risks with the technology to evolve and innovate customer-facing offerings.¹</p> The Shift to Real-Time Treasury</strong></h4> Recent surveys on the impact of real-time treasury and payments show increasing value (and interest) in moving to real-time across various treasury and finance functions. A 2019 survey from technology firm FIS ranked APIs and real-time payments as the technologies with the most significant impact.</p> Source: 2019 FIS Corporate Payments and Bank Connectivity Market Report </figcaption></figure> Of course, APIs and real-time payments are closely related, in that APIs underpin immediate payments and other in-demand services like up-to-the-minute payment tracking and cash positioning.</p> The good news is that since Sibos 2019, more banks have taken heed of the API imperative. A recent Celent survey² found that an overwhelming majority of banks (92%) are increasing investments in open API client connectivity, a new corporate-to-bank delivery channel.</p> APIs and Real-Time in Action</strong></h4> Last year's Sibos reconnaissance revealed only a handful of value-added corporate banking services enabled by APIs. Now, many banks and corporates are using API connectivity to receive gpi and g4c (gpi for Corporates) statuses, rather than traditional MT messages. API connectivity guarantees the most up-to-date visibility on transaction statuses as opposed to batch file transmission. SWIFT also offers a pre-validation API for beneficiary accounts and the gCase API to manage case investigations. SWIFT's latest development in the space is the Community Developer portal, containing what SWIFT refers to as OpenBanking Extensions, APIs that extend and complement existing Open Banking services such as PSD2.</p> Both banks and fintechs continue to roll out new solutions that simplify API client connectivity for corporate clients. For example, JPMorgan offers six pre-built APIs for popular treasury management solutions (TMS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. The APIs allow clients to initiate US real time payments, retrieve balances, manage bank accounts, and track payments directly with their systems.</p> Other solutions include the Trovata.io API platform, which offers out-of-the-box connectivity with Bank of America, Citi, HSBC, JPMorgan, Silicon Valley Bank, PNC, First Republic, and Wells Fargo. Cloud Elements provides API endpoints for many popular accounting, payments, and ERP packages, including QuickBooks, Sage, SAP, Stripe, Square, and Coupa. </p> In addition, Codat.io focuses on connectivity for small business accounting packages in Canada, the US, UK, Australia & New Zealand, Netherlands, and Hong Kong, including Xero, Zoho Books, Wave, FreshBooks, and ClearBooks. </p> The API-enabled services being created for corporate clients, whether delivered by banks or other partners, are already combatting disruption from new entrants while generating measurable results. It is critical that banks, clients, and providers offer client-facing APIs to reap the benefits.</p> ¹ Creating Value-Added Services for Corporate Clients: Overcoming Barriers to Adopting APIs, Patricia Hines, Celent, December 2019</p> ² Playing the Long Game to Enhance Client Engagement: 2020 Corporate Digital Channels Survey Results, Patricia Hines, Celent, August 2020</p>