Equity Bank Leapfrogs Peers by Allowing Developers to Access its APIs

Equity Bank has been making large strides with the view of becoming a fully digital bank. Milestones towards achieving this began with the bank launching an MVNO called Equitel through its subsidiary Finserve Africa Limited. The goal for Equity bank was to foster the convergence of mobile money transfer and banking services.  Equitel has since grown in scale and currently processes 84% of all the loans offered by the bank.

A while back, the bank launched Eazzy Suite, a bouquet of products targeting its customers. The goal was to make banking align with the lifestyle needs of Equity’s customers. The products under the Eazzy Suite include  a banking app known as Eazzy App; an interoperable payment platform, EazzyPay; a mobile based loan product, EazzyLoan; a solution to help Chamas, investment clubs and groups manage their joint finances and investments, EazzyChama among others.

Eazzy API

An API (Application Program Interface)  refers to a set of rules that determine how software components should interact.  In a nutshell, they do this by “exposing” some of a program’s internal functions to the outside world in a limited fashion. That makes it possible for applications to share data and take actions on one another’s behalf without requiring developers to share all of their software’s code.

In the case of the Eazzy API, it allows developers to seamlessly integrate their websites and apps with Equity Bank’s payment platform. Customers making online purchases through websites or apps will directly paying for goods in their shopping list or electronic baskets in one step, which is more convenient than the current process where buyers have to key in a series of entries before purchases are successful.

The beauty of the API is that users are not necessarily charged for the service if they are using Equity Bank services.   For instance, if a customer of a platform is an Equity Bank customer, and they make a purchase for the same using the platform, they are not charged.  At the same time, the payments are directly desposited to the merchants account at no extra charges, making the process all the more seamless.  Already online retailer Jumia has already integrated the Equitel API with its platform making it easy for customers to make the purchases and pay for them using Equity Bank. Others also using the same include Chamasoft, Cellulant and Strathmore University and Equity Bank is hoping more developers will tap into this power for their solutions.

Access to the API

Developers seeking to access the API can do so on their website where they can register for the same. According to the bank, Eazzy API leverages off Equity’s robust technical capabilities and dominance in payments by exposing merchant payment tills services, mature payment and open payment APIs to all the mobile wallets, banks, debit and credit card association, social media, Loans, bulk transfers, real time forex and stocks prices.  It also allows businesses to build  internal financial processes using Eazzy APIs. The API documentation is in two formats, the Identity API which can be used to gain access to other Equity Bank API protected resources. The Transaction API on the other hand allows for the developer to Create Payments, Purchase Airtime and Create Remittance.