Afinis Interoperability Standards Releases New APIs to Help Businesses with Cash Management Decisions
Adopting the new application programming interfaces will help corporate banking customers better access detailed financial data across banking platforms
Nacha’s Afinis Interoperability Standards announced today it has released three new APIs to assist corporate customers of financial institutions with accessing and reviewing their own financial transaction data to better help them with cash management analysis and informed decision-making.
Afinis is a membership-based organization that focuses on the rapid delivery of APIs and other financial services standards across the U.S. and globally. The new APIs are:
- Get Corporate Account Balances: enables corporate customers of a financial institution to retrieve balance information for their account(s).
- Get Corporate Transaction History: allows business and corporate account holders to get transaction history information for their account(s) for a date or range of dates from their financial institution.
- Get Corporate Transaction Detail: helps corporate bank customers to get detailed information from their financial institution for a transaction on their account to see additional data associated with a credit or debit.
“Businesses are seeking interoperability for banking technology, in particular, to give them better access to their financial data across platforms,” said George Throckmorton, Executive Director of Afinis. “Even subtle differences across platforms can pose a challenge, which is why there is consensus within the payments and financial services industry that standardized APIs, created by Afinis, would be of value.”
About the APIs
The Get Corporate Account Balances API would be useful for business and corporate account holders because it allows them to retrieve account balance information from multiple financial institutions in the same data structure, making analysis easier.
The Get Corporate Transaction History/Detail APIs would help corporate bank customers better access their financial transaction data, as well as integrate that data into other business applications, such as treasury workstations, enterprise resource planning (ERP), or accounting applications.
The Get Corporate Transaction History API would retrieve all transactions based on the request made, while the Get Transaction Detail API would retrieve the full description for a single transaction.
The Afinis suite of completed APIs also include:
- ACH Payment Initiation: allows businesses to submit standardized ACH payment instructions to their financial institution.
- Transaction Status: allows an Originator of an ACH transaction to check the status of a submitted payment instruction.
- Real-Time Billing Account Validation: enables bill pay providers to complete a real-time validation of consumer-entered account numbers directly with the billers.
- Bank Contact Information: allows originating financial institutions to quickly find and alert the appropriate contact within a receiving financial institution of potential fraud to prompt further investigation.
- Bank Contact v2 (for eventual use with the ACH Contact Registry): will enable financial institutions to input and receive contact data from the Nacha database when that capability becomes active.
- Account Validation: ensures target accounts are valid and payments are posted as desired.
- ACH Account Validation (AAV) (for use with Phixius): enables a participant of Phixius, Nacha’s platform to enable the sharing of payment-related information, to confirm the status of an account before originating an ACH transaction.
- Pay Me: enables a biller to electronically route billing information to any customer through any network.
- Payee Profile: allows a company to obtain correct payment transaction details and remittance requirements to pay another company regardless of ERP system, business provider network or financial institution.
Afinis membership is open to all types of organizations – regardless of size or location – interested in the development of API standards. To join or learn more about how Afinis is advancing API standardization to enhance the efficiency and security of today’s modern financial industry, visit afinis.org.
About Nacha
Nacha governs the thriving ACH Network, the payment system that drives safe, smart, and fast Direct Deposits and Direct Payments with the capability to reach all U.S. bank and credit union accounts. Nearly 27 billion ACH Network payments were made in 2020, valued at close to $62 trillion. Through problem-solving and consensus-building among diverse payment industry stakeholders, Nacha advances innovation and interoperability in the payments system. Nacha develops rules and standards, provides industry solutions, and delivers education, accreditation, and advisory services.