RCBC Partners With APIwiz to Launch Digital 2.0 Marketplace for Pioneering the Future of Financial Service Distribution

SINGAPORE, November 12, 2024 (Newswire.com) - Philippines’ Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) has announced at the Singapore FinTech Festival its strategic collaboration to pilot its Digital 2.0 Marketplace, which will define the future of digital distribution. Banks can follow a platform approach built around unbundling and re-assembling products and services through Open Platforms. RCBC will become the first bank in Southeast Asia to offer this platform. This groundbreaking marketplace will transform banking services by enabling real-time service creation through automation, providing significant benefits to customers and RCBC's global strategic partners.

“We aim to make banking and related services accessible to Filipinos worldwide, and our ongoing commitment to innovation will make this a reality. With APIwiz, we can manage and govern our Application Protocol Interface (APIs) in real-time and leverage composable APIs to comply, compete, and collaborate, allowing us to offer a wide range of unprecedented services that customers in this market have never experienced before through platform banking,” shared Lito Villanueva, Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation & Inclusion Officer, RCBC. 

APIs serve as the essential connectors in modern banking while platform banking continues to evolve. Banks should prioritize deploying and integrating service meshes in the short term to facilitate interactions with legacy core banking systems. This approach acts as a gateway for external connections and speeds up integration by exposing well-defined APIs. Over time, banks are expected to transition to microservices-based core platforms, fostering a more scalable and flexible ecosystem. 

“This transition will enable a true platform banking environment streamlining API integration and deployment, accelerating banks’ transition to modern, microservices-based platforms for enhanced flexibility and scalability,” shared John Alabastro, IT Shared Services Group Head & CTO, RCBC

“APIwiz, an end-end API platform, allows enterprises to build, govern, and operate APIs effectively. APIs are the digital glue of modern banking; however, the number of APIs used in banking is growing exponentially, and an API platform is needed to simplify, standardize, centralize, and automate API delivery. Open banking helps create innovative business models. Using APIs, RCBC can transform itself from a business to a platform, multiplying value creation by enabling business ecosystems within and outside the enterprise,” shared Darshan Shivashankar, Founder and CEO of APIwiz.

“Supporting the execution of this strategic partnership is Hungry Workhorse, a Manila-based services company specializing in digital and cultural transformation and a partner of APIwiz. "This collaboration places RCBC as a Filipino company at the forefront of innovation and digital experiences, demonstrating its strong commitment to empowering Filipinos on their financial journey and making it more accessible and easier, no matter where they are," according to Kay Calpo-Lugtu, COO of Hungry Workhorse.

About Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation

Part of the Yuchengco Group of Companies, Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) is the fifth largest privately owned universal bank in the Philippines, with over Php1.3 trillion in total resources as of June 30, 2024. It is an affiliate of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Japan’s second-largest bank. 

For over 60 years, RCBC has been building a reputation for providing the best customer experience, award-winning digital banking services, and pioneering innovations. Euromoney and Asia Money have recognized it as the Philippines’ Best Bank for Digital for five straight years (202020-2024). The Bank offers various banking and financial products and services to cater to diverse customer segments. It provides consumer, commercial, and corporate lending products, deposits and cash management solutions, treasury products, remittance services, and digital banking services.

RCBC and its subsidiaries also offer corporate banking, wealth, trust, retail financing (auto, mortgage/housing loans, credit cards, and microfinance loans), remittance, leasing, and securities.

About APIwiz
Headquartered in California, APIwiz provides a centralized management platform for API operations, enabling the APIOps framework to develop consumable, monetizable APIs and fostering collaboration among business and technical stakeholders. With low-code tools, automation, and embedded governance,  APIwiz streamlines the entire API lifecycle—from planning and design to building, managing, testing, securing, and publishing. Its federated gateway capabilities enable seamless integration with any API gateway while offering real-time insights into API usage, performance, compliance, and workflow visualizations without external tools.

About Hungry Workhorse 
Hungry Workhorse is a digital, culture, and customer experience transformation consulting firm that drives transformational growth through innovative, grounded methodologies in strategy, technology, and people.

Source: APIwiz