The Transactions API is a set of basic services used to retrieve and manage the information related to any and all financial actions performed by a customer with a specific financial institution (FI).

Transactions are the movement of funds from one account to another. They’re quite literally the lifeblood of a financial institution. The records of these transactions are vital to your business and critical to the financial health of your customers. The record of a customer’s identity is who they are, and the record of their accounts represents what they have. Transactions are records of what they do.

Value

The Transaction service enables customers of a financial institution to:

• Ensure the right amounts are going to the right accounts, payments, vendors, etc.
• Check for cleared and pending transactions, giving an accurate snapshot of financial health
• Find and report fraudulent or inaccurate transactions
• Review spending history over time, determine trends, set budgets and future plans

It enables the FI to:

• Watch for fraudulent activity and ensure security of systems
• Untangle disputes between customers and vendors, providers, or payees
• Review spending trends to determine new or additional product offerings

It enables developers to:

• Provide a central set of services to manage transaction history records, fetch by criteria, clear cache, get data for ancillary records like images and running balances

What is Supported

The Transactions API Technical Documentation in the API Specs section fully describes the endpoints, header values, parameters, and responses. Below is an overview of the API capabilities:

• Retrieve transaction records from FI host systems for any account
  • Transactions can be retrieved by FI customer, which can be a person or a business
  • Start and End Date parameters allow setting the range of transactions to be retrieved
  • Future Transactions (pending) can be retrieved if wished using a separate parameter
  • Business Banking user IDs can be retrieved per transaction for additional calls
  • Additional fields are available if requested
    • At present, the Time Zone and Time Zone Offset of transactions can be retrieved.
    • Other additional fields may be added in future versions of the API
  • If a transaction is associated with an image (Check or Deposit Slip), the image identifier can be retrieved
    • A separate call using these identifiers can retrieve the image files
  • The API also calculates a running balance for the account, per transaction
    • Returning the running balance is configurable - can be turned on or off.
    • The running balance can be displayed alongside transactions if desired.

Fields Returned in Transaction Records

• Record GUID
• Institution ID
• Customer ID
• Account ID
• Transaction Number
• Transaction Date
• Description
• Amount (including Currency Code, e.g. “USD”)
• Transaction Type
• Transaction Status Indicators - Y/N (Is Credit, Is Exportable, Is Pending)
• Additional Info (if requested via parameter - Time Zone, Time Zone Offset)

Additional Product Details

A number of configurations can be set to ensure proper operation of the Transactions API, with regard to host calls, caching, and circuit breakers:

• Host settings are crucial to ensure proper communication to the DPV systems of each FI, identification of broker capabilities, limitations of fetch ranges, sort orders, etc.
• Cache settings are important to managing memory allocated to the Transaction API operations. Auto clearing timeouts can be set at the Account, FI, and Application levels.