CSI
About the Developer Portal
CSI helps community and regional banks solve their customers’ needs through open and flexible technologies. In addition to its core banking platform, these include the latest in lending, digital banking, payments, financial crime prevention and cybersecurity.
The CSI Developer Portal provides a sandbox of these products and solutions that enables fintech innovators and forward-thinking community banks to design and deploy their own CSI-integrated APIs. These programs include:
- A growing list of solutions covering essential banking functions that connect to a bank’s existing applications.
- Creative autonomy and technical expertise to customize a bank’s products and services to enhance customer experience and efficiency.
- Developer-focused tools and resources to help fintechs connect to CSI’s enterprise suite of solutions.
- Ongoing updates for CSI APIs, ensuring modernization and security.
- Unparalleled support every step of the way.
In addition to a growing list of integrated fintechs and integrators, CSI community banks (based in the U.S.) and developers from around the globe can access new documentation methods, resources and standardizations that simplify the implementation process and accelerate time to value. Community banks can consider more application APIs across account opening, payments, document services and other applications—and quickly onboard solutions to open new lines of revenue, streamline back-office operations and improve engagement with account holders. As community banks across the country seek to capture new deposits, that ability to easily integrate APIs that can offer new sources of revenue and enhance their customer experience and retention has become paramount to short- and long-term growth.
CSI’s Developer Portal includes technical and application guides as well as test environments that allow both parties to better understand data communication and associated business rules. CSI visually curated these features to enable non-IT bank staff—such as deposit, loan and payments officers—to easily digest information, understand the purpose of a developer’s API and stay compliant by highlighting data visibility and access. All APIs available in CSI’s Open Banking Marketplace must also have a proven deployment through the Developer Portal with a bank before listing.
Why They Stand Out
To match the innovation and creativity of its users, CSI’s Developer Portal continuously evolves based on feedback from fintech partners. Furthermore, the company recently announced new features that make it easier for community bank partners to integrate applications from third-party developers via open APIs.
CSI allows developers to choose their own adventure regarding education, exploration and implementation of its APIs. When using CSI’s portal, developers can:
- Create unique subscription keys to test APIs.
- Use the “Try It” functionality to experience actual functionality.
- Explore guides on various types of integrations and support topics such as authentication.
- Find sample message bodies from nine of the most widely used programming languages that can be copied to expedite development efforts.
CSI worked directly with fintech partners to finesse implementation, user-test the interface and create features that enhance developers’ user experience and ease of integration. Third-party developers have the tools and methodologies they need to develop according to CSI’s APIs—along with samples of code to promote standardization across all APIs.
The Developer Portal has a simple sign-up process. Following the input of a few personal details, developers’ request for access is sent to a dedicated team that will set the developer up with the credentials needed based on your proposed project. Shortly after, developers receive an email with a link that finishes enrollment. This swift process avoids any back-and-forth onboarding communication between CSI and the developer that would traditionally cost both valuable time. After signing up, developers can explore dozens of APIs with hundreds of endpoints available for integration that truly underscore the functionality of the company’s portal.
When CSI started the initiative to bring a new vision for its Developer Portal to life, the company went directly to those using it and interviewed the current users across many different fintechs. To ensure it made the best enhancements possible, the team reached out to users who had never tested CSI’s current developer environment and solicited their input to help drive engagement.
Below are some examples of how CSI augmented its Developer Portal in response to direct developer feedback. (Note: All enhancements listed below are currently live and have received positive feedback from users.)
Enhancement: “Try It” functionality.
The user interface has been updated to predominantly display the “Try It” tool to increase visibility while promoting experimentation and discovery with users. This tool allows developers to play around with code samples and test environments with which they can experiment before moving forward. To make the Developer Portal easier to navigate, CSI updated the entire portal to only use one credential across all APIs, which developers can manage in their user profile. The developer’s credentials, including subscription key and client ID, are automatically populated in the tool and subsequently in the sample request body. CSI also added up to nine of the most widely used languages to generate sample requests along with a copy function that allows the developer to copy directly into an external collection. Continuous updates and approvals of sample data can be used to post and get real responses from the actual CSI Application environment as opposed to other portal experiences that return the same pseudo request. Samples include actual test customers, accounts, and transactions that completely mimic a production experience.
Enhancement: Dynamic navigation.
The Developer Portal’s user interface includes a side navigation bar that will expand and collapse depending on the user’s preference. When the navigation bar remains open, there is adequate space to see all details about the selected endpoint even with the “Try It” window expanded.
Enhancement: Fresh technical and application guides.
CSI provides technical documentation guides that help developers understand the proprietary functionality of its APIs and a pathway to development according to the developer. Given the very technical nature of APIs, CSI has a standardized and documented process for even the most difficult of integrations. The basis for all the content in the Developer Portal is driven by many individual product-specialized teams. CSI’s internal standards ensure any API released contains full documentation, including:
- Application relatable names which allow a banker to quickly reference the same field inside the corresponding application.
- Clearly defined system required values.
- Clearly defined field types with specific values or limitations.
- Human-readable descriptions with hyperlinks to priority help files outlining additional details.
The portal also features “Standardized Error” responses with expanded details, example response bodies and any priority errors specifically outlined. This functionality helps developers deal with issues they encounter head-on with a step-by-step playbook. Additionally, CSI has a “Help API” functionally that is available for fintechs to get the bank’s unique translatable values for applicable fields.
Enhancement: New sandbox environment.
CSI has an entirely new sandbox environment to back its Developer Portal. The term “sandbox” refers to test environments developers can play with to ensure they understand the interworking of CSI’s API functionality before the implementation takes place. The environment exactly matches what is available in a production environment for CSI customers. It is also built on the same system as production, which means it mimics actual response times when the integration goes live, thus eliminating any latency in the prior test environment.
Enhancement: Integration enablement.
CSI has a section in the portal dedicated to house “guides” or “recipes” that outline the APIs and endpoints commonly needed to perform the most popular types of integrations. The intent is to give developers the information they need to immediately get started at any time of day or night without needing to contact a CSI support team member for basic questions on standard functionality. This will increase the time/value relationship between CSI and its developers, ensuring partners can work at their own pace.
Enhancement: Unmatched customer service.
CSI’s customer support has always been one of its most positive onboarding aspects and the firm strives to continue to look for ways to improve. CSI’s portal has a contact form that routes questions and reports of issues directly to the firm’s Case Management System which is monitored by the entire team. This helps ensure developers have the highest level of support needed when questions or issues arise during integration development.
Enhancement: Real-time portal notifications.
CSI’s notifications in its portal are also very prominent, ensuring that developers are always up to date on integration or portal modifications. CSI’s ChangeLog displays in a prominent location and is available on every page. The ChangeLog is updated monthly with any new API functionality as well as information on new API versions released. Additionally, developers who are subscribed to the portal are automatically enrolled to receive notifications about any maintenance windows, issues and monthly updates on the API changes as they are posted to the ChangeLog.
Finally, the most innovative technical features are as much about what the developer doesn’t see as what they do. CSI’s Developer Portal is designed to evaluate and improve many of the already outstanding out-of-the-box solutions. When developers provide feedback, the Developer Portal needs to quickly adapt to incorporate additional operational efficiencies through back-end automation and analytics built in-house. By choosing to build directly on its own API management, CSI can immediately deploy the most up to date APIs and quickly correct any issues.
CSI’s goal is to continually improve the developers‘ experience by looking at the data behind the scenes without having to ask partners directly. Its in-house analytics continuously provide data to identify pain points within the development portal even before they may be reported by developers. CSI also enables an easy way for developers to submit their feedback or make suggestions—a value CSI prides itself on.
CSI’s Developer Portal is built on feedback from its fintech partners and creates proprietary strategies and tactics to address challenges. The software and technology provider plans to continue evolving the portal and its connected solutions and APIs to best serve its end-client: community banks.
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