Digital Partnerships and Innovation: The Co-operative bank has opened its application program interface (API). This comes as the bank’s latest effort at promoting partnerships and innovation, and building disruptive business models and platforms that deliver a seamless customer experience.

“The Bank believes in co-creation and innovation that enables people, businesses and the society to grow. It believes that innovative products and services that benefit their customers and the public in general are key to success,” said Co-op Bank in a statement. An API is a code that allows two software programs to communicate with each other.

Co-op Bank said that it had ensured that it weighed in the business needs and the prevailing market situation for maximum gains in the available opportunities. “This ensures that customer needs are met. It also ensures that we stay on top of the changing market trends,” the bank said.

With the Co-op APIs dubbed Co-opConnect, the bank will be aiming to publish as many banking services as possible enabling their Corporate and Sacco customers to add value to their mobile apps and web services.

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The system’s APIs fall in two categories, that include the account information services APIs and the transactional APIs. The Transactional APIs will enable:

• Internal Funds Transfer- Enables customers to transfer funds from a co-op bank account to another Co-opbank account
• Pesalink send to account- Enables customers to use Pesalink while sending money from a Co-opbank account to another bank account in a different bank
• Instant Notification Service- Sends real time notifications to a customer’s accounting system of any activities in the respective customer’s account i.e debits and credits
• Send money from a Co-opbank account to an Mpesa wallet.

The Account Information Services APIs on the other hand will enable:

• Account Information Service APIs
• Account Balance Inquiry- Shows the account balance as at a given time. The balances will be as follows;
• Cleared Balance
• Booked Balance
• Blocked Balance
• Available Balance
• Arrears Amount
• Uncleared Balance
• Overdraft  limit
• Account Transaction Inquiry- Shows the status of a specific transaction. For example was a cash deposit successful.
• Account Mini Statement- Shows the latest 10 transactions in your account.
• Exchange Rate Enquiry- Show the days foreign exchange for all major world currencies e.g. USD, GBP, EUR, CAD etc that are offered by Co-opBank
• Account Validation-   Confirms that a provided account (mostly from a third party) is a valid account number within the bank’s system.
• Status Enquiry-  This shows the status of a specific request for example if you send a pesalink transaction on Open Banking the status enquiry API will provide an update whether the transaction has reached Co-opbank and is been processed.

Already, leading organizations and FinTechs have provided positive reviews which have cast the Co-op APIs as user friendly. The APIs are accessible from the web or mobile application. In the same vein, they are a safe and secure mode of transacting, come with a simplified integration process, and give real time update of payment status. They also deliver a seamless customer experience.

You can access the Co-op APIs from the following link https://developer.co-opbank.co.ke:9443/store/apis/home

Quick takeaway

An application program interface (API) is code that allows two software programs to communicate with each other. An API defines the correct way for a developer to request services from an operating system (OS) or other application and expose data within different contexts and across multiple channels. An Open API also known as a public API are published on the internet and allows the owner of a network- accessible service to give a universal access to customers.

Exposing data with an API can improve the customer experience because it provides greater functionality and scope of services within a single application or other digital property.