APIs – of any kind – are a technology that connects two different systems and securely transfers data between them, instantly. Some APIs are easy to connect to with simple 1-page instructions – for example weather APIs that pipe today’s forecast into your cell phone, or map APIs that provide your rideshare driver with turn-by-turn directions. A corporate bank API, then, is a technology that connects a corporation’s systems with its bank(s) and securely passes data back and forth between them. Each business bank API has its own unique characteristics – data formats, security architecture and messaging standards. Corporate banking APIs are highly complex to connect to and require following detailed instructions that reaches into the hundreds of pages, single spaced! Without a corporate bank API aggregator, every API connection must be built individually, one-by-one, learning from scratch every time about the idiosyncrasies of that particular bank API. Connecting to just one business bank API – just the transactions API from Citibank, or just the balances API from Wells Fargo for example – can be a years-long process involving specialized software engineers and a great deal of effort from IT and corporate treasury. Now, multiply that timeline by the number of different bank APIs that exist, and again across your company’s different bank relationships, and you can quickly understand why connecting to bank APIs could seem like a sisyphean project. Enter the API aggregator. The role of a bank API aggregator is to ingest various APIs, standardize them, and then provide a single endpoint that can be easily plugged into a company’s existing systems.

Consumer bank APIs are relatively straightforward and simple to connect to. Companies like Plaid have already created a robust network of integrations for consumer bank APIs in use today. But, the banking information needed by a consumer is dramatically less complicated than the banking information that a business needs. A wholesale banking API includes information like invoice numbers, different languages, etc. making corporate bank APIs much more difficult to connect to directly. For corporates, the need for a business bank API aggregator is all the more vital. A corporate bank API aggregator ingests all kinds of bank APIs including balances, transactions, payment initiation, payment status, account management, account fees, virtual accounts, invoice financing, trade finance and more.

For corporate treasury, the main benefit of bank APIs is that they can access up-to-the second bank data and refresh it as frequently as desired. The benefit of a bank API aggregator is that treasury advances to real-time connectivity but leaves behind the painful and expensive maintenance that is so common with legacy bank connectivity methods like host-to-host and bank portals, and are ultimately less reliant on IT. From an IT and systems perspective, connecting to even one single bank APIs is an arduous task involving specialized engineers and years of IT resources, much less connecting to multiple bank APIs across several financial institutions. Corporate treasury can see all the use cases and benefits of commercial bank APIs but without an army of IT resources, it becomes the impossible dream. With a bank API aggregator, the initial connection to the bank APIs becomes easy and straightforward. Take the single endpoint and plug it into your company’s existing software systems such as your ERP, TMS, data lake, payroll system and more. Once connected, your bank data now flows directly from all your banks into your existing systems. Rather than spending years building and doing initial testing of the connections, the timeline is much shorter. Once connected, the wholesale bank API aggregator provider is responsible for all ongoing maintenance. If a bank changes the format of the API, adds new data into an API or otherwise changes it the responsibility for updating the standardization lies with the aggregator. Gone are the days when corporate treasury and their IT partners are scrambling to update their bank file formatting process when a bank updates their messaging format. Also gone are the painful file management needs across treasury. Because bank APIs are a 2-way conversation where the connectivity channel and the data are one in the same, there are no bank files for treasury to manage. Just a stream of data designed to naturally flow between systems. Commercial bank API aggregators have an ever-expanding list of financial institutions that they connect to, which offers the company more flexibility should they wish to change banking partners. Opening a new bank account in a new country becomes easy and inexpensive because BankLync takes care of all the setup and standardization, and maintenance moving forward.

As we’ve discussed above, a business bank API aggregator takes different wholesale bank APIs and standardizes their unique characteristics into a single endpoint. In the market today, a business bank may offer its own API aggregator, but it only aggregates the various APIs (balances, transactions, payment initiation, etc.) from that one bank. Since most companies have several commercial banking partners, this isn’t particularly helpful. The best wholesale bank API aggregators are multi-bank. Why? Because they take data from all your company’s different financial institutions and standardize it – into one single endpoint to plug into your existing systems.