Case Study: UK’s leading foreign exchange supplier achieves rapid mobile innovation and cost savings with HCL’s API platform

APIs Enables The Integration Of Digital Channels With Complex Back-End Systems

Post Office, the UK’s leading foreign exchange supplier, needed a Backend-as-a-Service API layer to connect mobile and web channels to complex back-end systems and to cache data to reduce calls to paid external services for its Travel Money Card (TMC) mobile app. HCL was engaged to design and develop the API/middleware solution and to support integration with partners like MasterCard, Google Maps and FIS.

HCL implemented a Web-Oriented Architecture (WOA) four-tier API platform (services, aggregation, delivery, client) using WCF, BizTalk decisioning, distributed caching and JSON RESTful endpoints to serve iOS/Android apps. The HCL solution exposed reusable workflows (top-up, account unlock), provided distributed caching that reduced usage of paid web services and lowered costs, and acted as a Back-end-as-a-Service enabling faster app development and easier extension to other channels.