https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/banking-matters/reimagining-transaction-banking-with-b2b-apis
APIs can help global transaction banks move closer in the value chain to their clients amid rising competition.
B2B integration: The state of play
We see six major challenges around file-based integration:
- limited exception handling on format mismatches
- manual failure recovery following network or system outages
- weak controls for file tampering and man-in-the-middle breaches
- long customer onboarding times—as much as four to six months
- bulky file formats for enterprise resource planning (ERP) integration, requiring customization for each corporate
- higher operating cost to run and maintain the specialized software needed
Building a B2B API platform: Five success factors
- Embrace a product development mindset
- Design for process control and orchestration
- Weigh tradeoffs between a channel and product approach
- Set up a modern API lifecycle management platform
- API gateway
- API publisher
- API store and development portal
- API analytics
- Extend risk management and optional controls to API-based offerings
- Align security and regulatory controls
- Amend client undertakings and legal contracts
- Leverage partnerships and self-service solution for customer acquisition
- Form partnership with software-as-a-service finance companies
- Simplify customer onboarding
- Define an API taxonomy to accurately access system readiness, avoid proliferation of incompatible APIs, and prioritize for business value
- Experience APIs
- Process APIs
- System APIs
- Experience APIs should be owned by channel teams and process APIs by business owners. System APIs should be controlled by application owners.