Fintech API Ratings Jan 18–25: API Sandbox

Want to know about API performance? API.expert is on the case. We look at over 100 fintech APIs and pull all the metrics together to give you a general feeling for the service quality for an organization’s APIs in a particular category with our patented CASC score.

Something of interest

API sandboxes are rarely perceived as being at the glamor end of the API ecosystem. And yet, they are vitally important in building the Open Banking world we all want to see flourish.

An API sandbox should accurately reflect the behavior of the production. And it should also be available. That’s why it is so disappointing to see three APIs languishing in the Red Zone at the bottom of the Open Banking – UK – API Sandbox.

There is really is no excuse. It is not as though three banks don’t have CASC scores over 9.00 (and seven in the Green Zone). And these banks are all doing exactly the same thing.

There is also no excuse not to be actively monitoring your APIs so that you know exactly how your APIs are performing and how they compare to those of your competitors. This is Open Banking. You can monitor their APIs too!

The performance of the Nationwide API sandbox has dropped off the cliff in 2021. This is particularly true of the OAuth Access Token: client_credentials, which had a major outage during the period under consideration. But the three other endpoints have been struggling too. They all have very good pass rates, but are extremely slow and have a very high number of outliers.

The OAuth Access Token: client_credentials endpoint was failing on 18 and 19 January, whereas later in the week, a very large number of outliers are seen.

We see an unusual quantitized effect. This kind of phenomenon is usually associated with DNS Lookup Time, but here is it is owing to TCP Connect, which for many calls is either very close to 30 seconds or 60 seconds.

Clearly, there is a serious network configuration here that Nationwide needs to address as a matter of urgency.

The calls do pass, but there are passing after an unacceptably long time. It is through active monitoring that you can identify and deal with these kinds of significant service-affecting issue as soon as they arise.

This API really is need of some major TLC!

Fintech API Ratings: Overall Performance

Week Ending 25 January 2021

Category	Organization	CASC score
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	RadarRelay	9.33
Fintech	Square (API Sandbox)	9.28
Open Banking: PSD2	Railsbank	9.53
Open Banking UK: API Sandbox	Allied Irish Bank (GB) (API Sandbox)	9.37
Open Banking UK: Production	TSB	9.26
Open Banking UK: Open Data	Bank of Ireland	9.71

Bank of Ireland in the Open Banking – UK – Open Data category takes the overall title again this week with a CASC score of 9.71, up from 9.65 last week. A CASC score of over 9.00 is very good and one of 9.50 or more exceptional. Two of the six categories are headed by organizations with a CASC score of 9.50 or more this week. Sustaining a CASC score of >9.25 over a period of several weeks is a good showing and congratulations to those organizations that achieved it. All categories are headed by an API with CASC score of 9.26 or more, which is a very acceptable level of performance.

Fintech API Ratings: Latency

Week Ending 25 January 2021

Category	Organization	Median Latency
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	Kraken	219 ms
Fintech	Stripe	332 ms
Open Banking: PSD2	Railsbank	108 ms
Open Banking UK: API Sandbox	Starling Bank (API Sandbox)	144 ms
Open Banking UK: Production	Tide (Auth)	156 ms
Open Banking UK: Open Data	HSBC	87 ms

HSBC in Open Banking – UK – Open Daata again takes the overall title again with a median latency of 87 ms, up from 86 ms last week. An important caveat: medians can be misleading! A Fintech API might have a fast median latency but produce many slow outliers. These won’t affect the median, but they mean that users can experience many calls that were unacceptably slow. So just being fast isn’t everything. You have to be reliable too if you want to have good APIs and get a high CASC score!

Fintech API Ratings: Worst Overall Quality

Week Ending 25 January 2021

Category	Organization	CASC score
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	Coinlore	6.64
Fintech	Open Bank Project (API Sandbox)	7.33
Open Banking: PSD2	Nobody Below 8.00!
Open Banking UK: API Sandbox	Nationwide (API Sandbox)	2.36
Open Banking UK: Production	Creation Card (Auth)	4.37
Open Banking UK: Open Data	HSBC	7.65

Nationwide (API Sandbox) in the Open Banking – UK – Sandbox category takes the overall wooden spoon again with a CASC score of 2.36. See you again in a week as we head out of an absolutely epic January and plunge into February (already?). Also, don’t forget to look out for our monthly report for December and the weekly and monthly non-financial API reports. We will also be publishing special reports on the State of the APIs in the 2020, so that’s something else to look forward to!

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