APIs and the Cloud: An Impact Study

In their recent white paper, ThousandEyes concludes that all the clouds offer good choices from the perspective of network performance with solid backbones for data transfer. But that’s only part of the story. When we started with our unique multi-cloud approach, we assumed that there wouldn’t be much difference between different clouds when they’re used to call APIs. The fact is, they’re all VERY different. How we analyze performance Our product makes a series of calls to API endpoints. We use the same security (OAuth, OAuth+JWT, etc.) as a TPP (Third-Party Payment) provider or ASIP (Account Service Information) provider [...]

By |2018-11-15T09:50:42+00:00November 15th, 2018|Fintech, IT and Cloud, News, Opinion|0 Comments
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Top of the APIs: Which CMA9 Bank Was Summer Champion 2018?

The APImetrics Insights CASC (Cloud API Service Consistency) score lets you know the performance and quality of an API at a glance. It also lets you instantly compare any API with any other API. Not all APIs are identically comparable, so the usefulness in comparing two APIs depends on the nature of the APIs. In the case of Open APIs for UK CMA9 Banks, we can make direct (or almost direct) comparisons. That's because each of the CMA9 banks exposes APIs that do exactly the same things – with two caveats: Some banks have more ATMs or branches than others The [...]

By |2018-10-23T12:15:31+00:00October 17th, 2018|API Update, Fintech, Monthly Report, News|0 Comments
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Monthly Fintech API Performance Dashboard

As we get closer to launching some data-only products focused on our non-technical users, we wanted to make some data available that's easy to read and understand. So, the first 5 Fintech API performance dashboards are now up for public consumption. These cover Open Banking, UK CMA9 APIs, financial services API providers, common corporate APIs and US government APIs. We're planning to add search engines and social APIs (which they still let us!), so stay tuned. The dashboards contain key information for understanding more about the API quality and performance, including the best performers by speed and quality, a [...]

By |2018-08-29T12:36:10+00:00August 29th, 2018|Feature updates, News|0 Comments
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CMA9 Open Banking public APIs: Latest News

The story of our previous monthly surveys of the UK CMA9 Open Banking public APIs has been that roughly 30% of the APIs have fallen below an acceptable score of 800 or more. While things have improved in June, confirming our suspicions that many of the banks took advantage of the multiple holidays during May to make changes, we still observe that 28% of the APIs we monitor are performing below a 'good' score as determined by our CASC scoring system. This is strongly tied to a small number of the institutions involved. Generally speaking, if some of a bank's [...]

By |2018-08-15T08:24:19+00:00July 25th, 2018|API Update, Fintech, Monthly Report, News|0 Comments
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Coming Soon to UK’s Digital Marketplace and Microprocurement Platform

As I blogged a few weeks ago, one of the hottest trends right now in business and government is microprocurement. Always at the very front of any trend, we have just found out that APImetrics has been approved as a supplier for G-Cloud, the UK government's digital marketplace and microprocurement platform. So APImetrics will be going live on the brand new G-Cloud 10 on Monday, 2 July 2018. If you are in the lucky position to be a buyer of services from G-Cloud, get the date in your diary. In less than two weeks, you will be able to obtain [...]

By |2018-06-19T08:20:15+00:00June 19th, 2018|API Update, Feature updates, News|0 Comments
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Why we monitor, and why you should to… CMA9 Open Banking Edition

Fresh from congratulating a UK CMA9 bank on keeping their V1 and V2 APIs going for a decent period beyond the February switchover, we had a deeper look to see if the two APIs performed differently. For the most part, they did not, in fact, they were almost identical, except for this period between May 1st and May 5. During that 5 day window the V2 API dramatically improved, speedwise, so we decided to take a look at that. Afterall, who wouldn't always want to have a faster API? The data showed that rather than actually getting faster, the [...]

By |2018-05-17T11:56:01+00:00May 17th, 2018|News, Opinion|0 Comments
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APImetrics In Japan – May 22-25

APImetrics is excited to be part of the Washington State Trade Mission to Japan, the trip will be focusing on AI, and we're looking to make connections with any Japanese company or companies doing business in Japan who are interested in how our API and Microservice monitoring technology can be used, especially in the banking and finance sectors. It's a packed schedule including some open events, like this one (https://agusimeetup0525.peatix.com/) where you can meet us at the Aoyama Gakuin University Singularity Institute from 13:00 on Friday May 25th in Tokyo. Please feel free to reach out to us directly via email [...]

By |2018-05-14T11:03:06+00:00May 14th, 2018|News|0 Comments
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CMA9 OBIE UK Report, April. And a third of APIs still under perform.

Competition and Markets Authority In March, we published a report on the UK's public CMA9 Open Banking APIs V2 from the OBIE. IN it, we found that more than 35% of the APIs offered were performing below our expected acceptable score of 800. And we're sad to say, the numbers for April are essentially unchanged, with 32% of APIs scoring below 800. When we analyse the banks, we find that the under-performing banks have largely remained the same. Although there's a new entrant – Bank of Ireland – which has historically been one of the better performing. [...]

By |2018-08-10T07:44:13+00:00May 4th, 2018|Fintech, Monthly Report, News|0 Comments
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PSD2: National Governments and Bodies Have The Final Say

PSD2 is driven top-down by the European Commission and the European Banking Authority (EBA). But it is built bottom-up by the banks and other service providers themselves. And the Commission/EBA don't regulate PSD2 providers. It's the "national competent authorities." In other words, it's the regulator in each country. Unlike the UK, where the CMA9 regulations are defining what the banks must do, PSD2 leaves things entirely in the hands of the banks and related businesses. This creates an immediate problem. There might only be one set of regulatory technical standards for PSD2, but there are more than 30 [...]

By |2018-04-18T12:22:29+00:00April 9th, 2018|Fintech, News|0 Comments
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PSD2 Active API Performance Monitoring: You Can’t Do That From Here

API performance monitoring is part of managing, and here at APImetrics our mantra is: You have to manage your APIs. And if you are relying purely on passive monitoring of API gateways, you are not monitoring your APIs because you don't actually know how your APIs are really behaving from the end-user perspective. Open Banking is a cluster of innovations driven by the new technologies and pent-up customer demand for truly 21st century banking. PSD2 is a EU directive mandating that banks and financial institutions across the European Single Market allow access to their systems for the purposes of [...]

By |2018-08-09T09:52:44+00:00March 6th, 2018|Fintech, News, Opinion|0 Comments
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