ICICI Bank launches portal with around 250 APIs for fintech devs

Written by Ruby Hinchliffe
16th January 2020

ICICI Bank, India’s second largest bank by assets, has launched a portal with roughly 250 application programme interfaces (APIs) to help third party developers connect with the bank and create new fintech solutions.

The API portal is available only to “prospective partner companies”, and is said to be the biggest collection of APIs put together by any Indian bank.

ICICI Bank says “hundreds” of developers are already co-creating in the portal

The bank’s portal arrives just two months after India’s Yes Bank launched its own API portal. The Yes Fintech Developer sandbox offers around 50 virtual APIs, a fifth of the amount of APIs ICICI Bank is now offering.

The bank’s executive director, Anup Bagchi, reveals that “hundreds” of developers are already onboard the ICICI Bank API Banking Portal and working within the marketplace.

“It [the portal] is envisioned to be the gateway for several prospective partner companies to tie-up with the bank in a quick and frictionless manner to help foster rapid innovation and co-creation with partners,” says Bagchi.

The portal is effectively a sandbox environment, providing detailed workflows to help guide developers to a production phase. Those who use the sandbox are required to complete a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) beforehand.

Categories covered by the some 250 APIs include payments, accounts and deposits as well as cards and loans. Fintechs, corporates and e-commerce start-ups are among those welcomed by the bank to join the portal and develop their products.

Alongside Yes Bank and ICICI Bank, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India launched its API sandbox in November 2019, specifically designed to help fintech start-ups – both from India and abroad – to build trading, portfolio management and analytics applications.