The platform will simplify and fully automate the connection of external partners from various sectors to VTB services, including insurance and retail. After connecting to the platform, partners will be able to create banking products under their own brands, which will be issued and serviced by VTB.

This year, about 200 financial services will be available via the API platform, including:

• Car loan calculators
• Bill payment services
• Services for the bank's loyalty program partners
• Integration services with external call centres

Partners will also be able to get seamless access to information and reference services about currency exchange rates, a list of bank service offices, contact information, services available at ATMs and VTB branches, and other services.

Vadim Kulik, Deputy President and Chairman of the VTB Management Board:
“As part of our digital transformation plans, VTB has developed an API platform for accelerating and expanding the bank’s interaction with its partners and the creation of new client services. In addition to the infrastructure function, the new platform will increase efficiency for the bank’s internal systems, reduce integration time to two weeks, and increase productivity and reliability with tens of thousands of transactions per second.”

Ilya Starostin, Head of the IT Architecture Department at VTB said:
"The new API platform gives VTB enormous opportunities to develop its services and partner relationships with companies from completely different sectors, including telecoms, retail chains, and insurers. In the near future, a portal for developers will be available, enabling partners to connect to the VTB platform. Partners will be able to independently subscribe to VTB services and publish their own for information exchange. "

The platform consists of 4 key elements:
• An internal API platform allows integration between the bank's internal systems and calls for partner services in the bank's loop.
• The partner API platform allows partners and customers to get the bank's services.
• Developer portal - a tool for getting information about the API, testing interaction, and getting statistics.
• File sharing platform - a tool for secure file sharing between the bank and its partners.

For reference.

Since 2019, VTB has been carrying out a technological transformation as part of the bank's strategy implementation. One of the main projects of VTB's digital transformation strategy is the creation of an advanced omnichannel platform based on Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

Vadim Kulik, Deputy President and Chairman of the Management Board of VTB, previously noted that the development of such technologies as open API protocols, microservice architecture, Big Data and artificial intelligence technologies, biometrics and "clouds" have created great prerequisites for a qualitative leap and the formation of new types of ecosystems that are built on the principle of partnership of leaders.

Kulik stressed that by rebuilding the organization on microservices and creating open APIs, VTB becomes completely open to external players.

"You can embed your own services in us, you can embed our services in yourself. This approach allows you to create additional value for the client or build an ecosystem on a completely different level. That is an ecosystem that anyone can integrate into, where there are no restrictions, " Kulik said earlier