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Best Practices

6 Questions to ask about APIs on a Corporate Banking RFP

Branson Low | October 7, 2022

Addressing Bank APIs in an RFP

Treasury teams are experts in countless highly complex topics. But when it comes to asking the right questions on your treasury workstation RFP or for a new bank partner, it helps to have an inside track.

As the authority on bank APIs for corporate treasury and finance, FinLync’s engineering team has seen under the hood of more than 100+ corporate  bank APIs  from all corners of the world, and we’ve come up with a simple list of questions for treasury teams to ask about transaction banking APIs on your bank RFP.

Question #1: API service availability

Please confirm the availability of the following inbound corporate bank API services:

  • Bank account balances
  • Bank account transactions
  • Payment status
  • Bank account details including signatories
  • Receivables financing status – if part of your finance operations

Please confirm the availability of the following outbound corporate bank API services:

  • Payment initiation
  • Receivables financing requests – if part of your finance operations

In the event an API service is not available yet, please specify the planned availability date.

Question #2: Current API status

Please share a full list of all existing corporate bank APIs in your library today and a current status for each, including:

  • roadmap,
  • build in progress, or
  • live with clients

Question #3: Performance requirements/SLAs

For each corporate bank API  service confirmed above, please confirm the performance requirements/SLAs, including but not limited to:

  • uptime,
  • any restrictions on the number of calls or frequency of calls,
  • any volume restrictions for bulk payments, etc.

Question #4: API specification availability

How do you make your technical bank API specifications available? Do you have a corporate bank API developer portal  available for the corporate bank APIs confirmed above?

Question #5: Pricing

What is the pricing structure of your transaction banking APIs?

Question #6: Security

What are the security mechanisms of your corporate bank APIs?

 

Bonus

While too technical for an RFP, there are two additional questions to ask later in the selection process: first, ask about the availability of a bank API testing environment and second, ask the banks where they rank on the annual Corporate Bank API Power Rankings Report.

 

Essential Guide to Bank APIs