NatWest has announced the launch of three new APIs targeted at corporate, commercial, and institutional customers.

The APIs are designed to facilitate real time payments and automated reconciliation processes, including BACs payments.

The launch is an expansion of the bank’s indirect access payments collection of APIs, which are currently used by NatWest agency banks and indirect payment service providers for bank-grade and non-bank grade domestic payments worth billions in value.

“Our newest APIs use the latest technologies to support our customers’ needs,” said Jonathan Hall, head of digital at NatWest. “The result is a seamless and secure transition to real-time payments in the digital, always-on economy.”

Hall added: “As we continue to innovate, our API products will allow our customers to improve their interaction with us and receive essential data more quickly.”

NatWest, which said it introduced the new APIs following customer feedback, has introduced the ability for commercial customers to directly initiate CHAPS, Faster Payments and international transfers and receive “near real time payment status notifications”.

The technology also allows businesses to pull and schedule reports to enable treasury teams to directly access information.

Aimed at large corporate customers, one of the APIs allows BACs payments to be submitted “unattended and seamlessly”.

NatWest Group also recently announced new partnerships with Token, Tink, and Yapily to roll out Variable Recurring Payments (VRP).

Variable Recurring Payments (VRP), also known as ‘sweeping’, is defined by the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE), which is overseeing the process, as the automatic transfer of money between a customer’s own accounts for a range of services, including utility bills, subscriptions and charitable donations.

The move means that NatWest now has agreements with six payment providers to offer VRP as a new payment method.

It has previously announced VRP agreements with TrueLayer, GoCardless and Crezco.

The bank is also piloting VRP through Payit, the company’s Open Banking platform, by offering VRP as a payment option for NatWest Rapid Cash customers.

Share Story: