Standard Chartered has launched an open banking application programming interface (API) developer portal for transaction banking, allowing any developer to make improvements to the platform.

The API will increase collaboration between the bank, corporates, fintech companies and independent developers by allowing them to develop value-added applications integrating their services with the bank. Launched globally around cash management, the solution will then be rolled out to other trade and securities services, and eventually to more of the bank’s business lines.

This is one of the first times a large international bank has created an openly-modifiable platform for it transaction banking services. Other banking APIs were launched by National Bank of Australia (NAB), the Oversea China Banking Corporation (OCBC) and BBVA (according to developer website programmableweb.com), but none of them focused on transaction banking.

“Previously, banks were operating closed ecosystems and were not exposing their data and content to third parties which made innovation based on financial data difficult. But in the new digital world, financial institutions that offer the fastest, most data-rich open APIs will attract the most fintech companies, clients and third parties to integrate with their services,” Gautam Jain, global head, digitisation and client access, transaction banking at Standard Chartered, tells GTR.

For example, the bank explains that the “GetAccountBalance” API, upon successful user authentication and entitlement checks, will return the various types of account balances applicable for the specified account number. This will help clients and third-party developers to tightly integrate with the bank to consolidate account balances in real time and optimise working capital management.

“Clients will be increasingly banking without leaving their ERP systems and that is a huge paradigm shift which Standard Chartered is leading,” the spokesperson adds.

Anyone interested in collaborating with the bank on the API can register themselves on https://developer.sc.com.