Power Of Two

Banks are allowing developers, technology companies and fintech players to plug into their core banking systems to offer new products and services.

- Anand Adhikari

Mutual fund investors have always found it tedious to get redemption money instantly credited to their bank accounts. It usually took a couple of days. That, however, is a thing of the past for investors of LIC Mutual Fund and DSP Blackrock Mutual Fund. These fund houses can now pay liquid fund unit holders right away. The entity that has made this possible is an old-generation private sector bank, RBL Bank, which, in collaboration with technology team of mutual funds, came up with a solution. It opened its core banking system via Application Programming Interface (API), a set of routines, protocols and tools for building software applications. The open API offered by RBL enabled the fund houses to give an integrated and seamless process to initiate payments for their customers.

Similarly, when a Mumbai-based travel and tours firm with a large number of sub-agents faced frequent cases of late air ticket issuance resulting from delayed information from sub-agents on fund receipts, YES Bank came to the rescue. It joined hands with developers to fix the problem and now facilitates quick ticket issuance and seat blocking by validating the travel company’s sub-agents prior to real-time fund processing. YES Bank has also been proactive in helping corporate clients use APIs to connect banking systems to their Enterprise Resource Planning software. For the clients, this translates into a seamless and secure interface to manage cash payables and receivables. Here too, API is allowing the technology of the two entities – the bank and its corporate clients – interact without human intervention.

YES Bank and RBL Bank are part of a new trend where banks are opening up their core systems to allow developers and financial technology companies to plug in and improve the customer experience.

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