ABOITIZ-LED lender Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank) has laid claim to the distinction of having the largest application programming interface (API) developer portal among Philippine banks, allowing it to accept public functions such as bills
payment, fund transfer and authentication.
The lender said it has over 600 API, which it said makes its portal one of the biggest in Southeast Asia.
It said the portal has already generated P3 billion worth of transactions to date, from both corporate and individual customers. Translated in terms of API calls, the portal averages around 40 million calls per month, or close to half a billion calls per year, the bank said.
UnionBank was the first local bank in the country to expose its APIs externally in 2016, when it organized its first “Hackathon.”
The portal is the interface between UnionBank’s set of APIs and their various developer stakeholders, particularly fintechs who develop new technology to extend financial services to the public.
“UnionBank aspires not only to expose its own capabilities but also those of its clients and partners. Today, there are numerous partner APIs that are also exposed in the developer portal together with UnionBank’s own banking APIs,” the bank’s Chief Information Officer Dennis Omila said.
“The goal is that once you go to our site [developer.unionbankph.com], you will see all the APIs that you will need, and not just banking,” Omila said.
Over the three-year period, UnionBank’s API platform has already garnered numerous awards and recognitions, both here and abroad, including the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Top Pesonet Volume Contributor.
