StanChart Adds API Link to 360T

"There were a large number of corporate clients who would like access to our liquidity through 360T via our API and we are giving them that access point," says Tom Roche, global head of e-commerce and retail products group, global markets, at Standard Chartered in Singapore.

The API, based on version 4.4 of the FIX messaging protocol, also lets Standard Chartered clients connect to FXall, Bloomberg and FX Connect, among other liquidity pools.

The multi-bank platform, which currently has 56 liquidity providers, takes prices from Standard Chartered and puts those rates onto its 360T platform. "It's added value to our clients because they now have access to liquidity from Standard Chartered and Standard Chartered has a new [price] distribution channel," says Singapore-based Mathew Kuppe, managing director of 360T, Asia-Pacific.

According to Kuppe, 360T offers two ways for a bank to integrate with the multi-bank platform-via a standard XML- or FIX-based API provided by 360T or a bank-developed API.

"We prefer providing the standard API to the bank for a number of reasons, most importantly because we provide an outsourced integration to the bank and it's faster when we control the project of development, and we can use what we've developed in the past," says Kuppe.

In the Standard Chartered integration, 360T adapted its own interface to the FIX interface of Standard Chartered.

Although 360T typically rolls out all instruments at once, with Standard Chartered the integration occurred in phases, with spots available on an RSS basis, followed by forwards and then swaps. The support timeline coincided with when those prices were available on StanChart's Straight2Bank platform, says Kuppe.

"We were interested in the functionality as soon as they became available," he says.

As for Standard Chartered, Roche says that it will take some time for usage of the FIX API to pick up but sees the API as a major contributor to e-commerce volumes at the bank eventually.

"It'll take some time...but I expect a significant amount of our e-commerce flow to be from our API in 12 to 18 months," he says.