- FX Compared’s sister company FXC Intelligence has just made its new APIs available
- The company's FX Pricing API is the first of two new product launches
- The APIs are released at a time when banks and challenger banks are competing for a bigger share of the international payments market
International payments data company FXC Intelligence has just launched its very own pricing Application Programming Interface (API) through its sister company FXC Intelligence and it is set to make it easier for companies to benchmark and react to live pricing data from financial institutions and payments providers.
The development comes at a time when fintechs and older payments players are competing to offer the best rates to their clients. With over $600 billion in money transfers just from personal remittances in 2018, fintech experts note that competition is fierce among paytechs but also indicates how profitable the industry is. Apart from personal remittances, banks and neo banks also facilitate business-to-business payments as well as payments sent to merchants.
The FX Pricing API makes it possible for companies to display current money transfer pricing data from banks and other financial providers, FXC Intelligence says. This is a welcome addition to the current technological development that is happening in the finance sector as companies need the latest information to offer the best rates to their clients.
With banks processing millions of dollars a day in wholesale payments, based on a recent Reuters report, the pricing API is quite useful. It doesn’t only compare rates though, it also makes it possible for users to compare their own prices with the rates that their direct competitors are offering. According to FXC Intelligence, the new API is also useful for internal analytics and can be utilised as an effective tool for market intelligence.
The API, referred to by the company as FX Pricing API, offers either live or near-live pricing information to allow users to make better decisions about their own rates. The API currently covers 208 unique currency corridors, according to FXC.
While the API is currently the new kid on the block, it already has the trust of big names in the foreign exchange industry. Some of its clients include Currencies Direct, Ripple and Lloyds Bank.
The API offers a pricing strategy for a company's products as well as data on the major payment providers in the market and initially focuses on consumer pricing. The brand says that “more providers are being added each month”.
Apart from the pricing API, FXC Intelligence is also launching its White Label Comparison API, an interface that gives money transfer comparison apps or websites the capability to show up-to-date pricing data for leading payment providers. Clients include MoneySupermarket, the UN Migration Agency and Thisismoney.
When asked about other benefits of using the product, FXC Intelligence representatives have said that users can “calculate the savings of their own product against any other competitor, make comparisons against the interbank rate, or against the average bank”. The brand notes, however, that this is only for supported countries.
