API.expert Weekly Banking API Analysis: Coinbase

This Week’s Banking API Highlights

• Tide in the Open Banking API – UK – Production category takes the overall title again this week with a CASC score of 9.84, down from 9.85 last week.
• HSBC in the Open Banking API – UK – Open Data category takes the overall title again with a median latency of 94 ms, down from 95 ms last week.
• Barclays (Sandbox Auth) in the Open Banking API – UK – Sandbox category takes the overall bottom spot again this week with a CASC score of 4.74, down from 5.24 last week.
• We take a good, hard look at how Coinbase is doing right now.

Something of interest

Coinbase was the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States by trading volume in March 2021 and they went public on NASDAQ in April, so they are very much the poster child of cryptocurrency exchanges right now.

We have added several Coinbase banking API endpoints so they will be appearing regularly on the API.expert table going forward. How did they do last week?

Coinbase achieved mid-table respectability, 10^th out of 20, which is OK, with a CASC banking API score of 8.25, in the Green Zone, although you might hope that such a big brand might hit a bit more strongly. They have 100% availability are the fastest API in the category, so a good base to build on.

It’s going to be inconsistency in the latency that’s letting them down. Let’s take a closer look.

As we can see, there’s big variations between regions and within regions. This is dragging down Coinbase’s CASC banking API score, but, more importantly, it’s dragging down the quality of service it’s providing to its users. As we often say here, you want, where possible for all users, to experience the performance.

That’s why you need to be actively monitoring your banking API from different clouds and regions so that you know whether your IBM Cloud North America users are experiencing an additional 71 ms of latency compared to AWS Europe.

Coinbase is a global company. It can’t claim that all of its users are in one region. And it can’t even say that everyone is using its app hosted, say, in AWS North America.

After all, you can be using the banking API from anywhere (we are), for instance. Your most serious users aren’t going to be using the mobile app. And they are certainly going to care that Google South Asia is 246 ms slower than AWS Europe.

Coinbase is pretty good on DNS Lookup Time, but they should be able to hit 4 ms or 12 ms everywhere and something is up with Azure South Asia.

This is reflected the TCP Connection Time. There is definitely something odd in Azure South Asia. And in trading, every millisecond counts. So why is Oceania 10 ms faster for TCP Connection Time than Google North America?

Again, for Handshake Time, Azure South Asia is anomalously slow. This is the kind of intelligence you only get from active monitoring your banking API. Everything after all might look fine from AWS.

But with Process Time, Azure South Asia is much quicker than AWS South Asia and Google South Asia. And it is not a case that Europe and North America are just faster than other regions. Google East Asia and IBM Cloud East Asia are up to 200 ms faster for Process Time than Azure East Asia and AWS East Asia. That’s a lot.

If Coinbase wants to improve its CASC banking API score, looking at how to ensure that, as far as possible (and clearly with such significant variations between clouds and regions, there is much optimization of configuration to be done) users from different cloud locations receive the same  performance will go a long way – and more importantly ensure that users aren’t missing out on the best possible prices when making a trade.

Banking API Analysis: Overall Performance

Week Ending 26 April 2021

Category	Organization	CASC score
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	Radar Relay	9.42
Fintech	Square (Sandbox)	9.49
Open Banking: PSD2	Railsbank	9.81
Open Banking UK: API Sandbox	Royal Bank of Scotland (Sandbox Auth)	9.80
Open Banking UK: Production	Tide	9.84
Open Banking UK: Open Data	Coutts	9.80

Tide in the Open Banking – UK – Production category takes the overall title again this week with a CASC score of 9.84, down from 9.85 last week.

Banking API Analysis: Latency

Week Ending 26 April 2021

Category	Organization	Median Latency
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	Coinbase	205 ms
Fintech	Stripe	321 ms
Open Banking: PSD2	Railsbank	99 ms
Open Banking UK: API Sandbox	Royal Bank of Scotland (Sandbox)	149 ms
Open Banking UK: Production	Tide	149 ms
Open Banking UK: Open Data	HSBC	94 ms

HSBC in the Open Banking – UK – Open Data category takes the overall title again with a median latency of 94 ms, down from 95 ms last week.

Banking API Analysis: Worst Overall Quality

Week Ending 26 April 2021

Category	Organization	CASC score
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	Coinlore	6.49
Fintech	Open Bank Project (Sandbox)	7.67
Open Banking: PSD2	Nobody under 8.00!
Open Banking UK: API Sandbox	Barclays (Sandbox)	4.74
Open Banking UK: Production	Yorkshire Building Society	6.54
Open Banking UK: Open Data	HSBC	6.49

Barclays (Sandbox Auth) in the Open Banking – UK – Sandbox category takes the overall bottom spot again this week with a CASC score of 4.74, down from 5.24 last week.

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