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BBVA Compass Bancshares Inc.'s application programming interface received top marks in our review of open APIs that large banks make available to the U.S. market, based on the variety of features it offers.
See below for an explanation of the methodology used in selecting the above companies.
In essence, APIs allow banks to share their data with third-party software developers. For instance, if developers wanted to build an app that helps a user find the right credit card, they could use one of Capital One Financial Corp.'s APIs to plug the bank's credit card data into their app (Click here to see a test project in action).
These APIs are ongoing projects. Capital One advertises on its site that several more APIs are on the way, including one for customer transactions. Citigroup Inc. makes additional features available in its non-U.S. APIs, of which there are several; Citigroup has APIs for Singapore, Australia and Mexico, to name a few.
Developer perspective
BBVA, Capital One and Citigroup all offer easy-to-use platforms with ample documentation and sandboxes to test out apps before putting them into production. Citigroup excels in...