Response times for Up bank’s Open Banking APIs have been found to be up to 36-times faster than its traditional bank rivals, according to performance data captured by Open Banking software developer, Frollo.

Analysing data from more than 15 million API (Application Programming Interface) calls made through its Open Banking Gateway platform since mid-2021, Frollo revealed that Bendigo-owned neobank Up topped its Data Holder rivals in both average response times (0.26 seconds) and reliability (at 99.88 per cent).

The industry average API response time was 0.86 seconds while the average reliability was 98.8 per cent amongst the 35 financial services organisations recorded through the Frollo Gateway in 2021.

API call times and reliability are key measures for the effectiveness of Australia’s Open Banking – and by extension the wider Consumer Data Right (CDR) – scheme.

An API effectively serves as an intermediary technology interface between software programs, enabling third-party applications to synchronise and connect to a financial services provider’s tools, customer data, and services.

The three fastest financial services providers in the CDR scheme, which takes an average measure of the two most popular Open Banking APIs (a combination of their Accounts API and Transactions for Account API response time) were Up (0.26 seconds), 86,400 (0.46 seconds), and NAB (0.65 seconds).

Of the big four banks, NAB was followed closely by CBA (0.68 seconds), then Westpac (1.28 seconds), and ANZ (1.53 seconds).

The slowest of the 35 FSIs recorded was HSBC, with an average time of 3.78 seconds.

The Accounts API provides basic information for a specific account, including account status, product category and ownership of the account, while the Transactions for Account API enables a Data Recipient to request a list of transactions for a specific account, including transaction ID, date and time, and amount.

Up had an average response time for the Accounts API of 0.11 seconds – more than 36 times faster than the bottom-placed HSBC, which took 4.05 seconds, on average, to respond.

Eleven Open Banking Data Holders, including the top-placed 86 400, bcu, and Beyond Bank, responded in 0.5 seconds or fewer when their Transactions for accounts API was called. MyState Bank took nearly four seconds, or up to five times as long as the leaders.

Among the brands with the most reliable APIs were Up, Regional Australia Bank, CBA, St George and P&N Bank, which all sat at or above the industry average of 98.22 per cent. Qantas Money (90 per cent), Citi (93 per cent) and HSBC (94 per cent) lagged the furthest behind.

Since Frollo began recording response and reliability data in July 2021, industry average API response times have consistently been below one second with reliability never dropping below 98 per cent.

Frollo notes that only ‘live’ Data Holders with a sufficient number of API calls were included in its analysis (a total of 35 institutions).

Currently, there are 72 Data Holders and 26 Data Recipients (that is, approved to receive CDR data from data holders) in the Open Banking scheme.