A Participant is an organisation that holds an Account within the RTGS service, and is legally bound by the published RTGS Account Mandate Terms & Conditions. The Accounts API enables Participants to view and manage various information associated with their Organisation like

• Retrieve a list of participants
• Retrieve CHAPS Payments Controls
• Retrieve CHAPS Payments Balances
• Retrieve CREST Payments Balances
• Retrieve Payment Parameters
• Update Payment parameters
• Retrieve Notification Configurations Preferences
• Update Notification Configurations Preferences

Below image depicts the various aspects of Participant information available via the Participants API.

Below section provides a brief explanation of each of the above mentioned Participant resources available via the Participant API.

Participant Details:

A Participant is an organisation who holds an Account within the RTGS service, and is legally bound by the published RTGS Account Mandate Terms & Conditions. Participants API allows Participants to retrieve their own basic details listed below. The Participants API allows the consumer to retrieve the details of a list of participants, that the consumer is authorised to. Additionally, using a specific Participant Id which is retrieved from the list of Participants, consumers can retrieve the details of a specific participant they are authorised to.

CHAPS Payment Balances:

CHAPS Payments Balances provides details of the payment attributes listed below for effective management of CHAPS payment balances.

This endpoint allows the consumer to retrieve the CHAPS Payments Balances detail based on the participant id, that the consumer is authorised to. Additionally, the below image lists the various Scheme Value Day Status Codes available for retrieval using the CHAPS Payment Balances endpoint.

CHAPS Payment Controls:

CHAPS Payments controls allows the account owner to manage the configuration of the settlement attributes listed below for effective processing of CHAPS transactions. This endpoint allows the consumer to retrieve the CHAPS Payments Controls detail based on the participant id, that the consumer is authorised to.

Payment Parameters:

Payment parameters are capabilities provided to the participants to manage CHAPS transaction parameters, including: bilateral limit, multilateral limit, bilateral brake, bilateral value cap, scheme value cap and headroom.

The GET endpoint allows the consumer to retrieve a specific participant's payment parameters based on the Participant id, that the consumer is authorised to. The participant Id can be obtained using the List of Participants endpoint. Below are the list of Payment Parameters attributes retrieved through this endpoint.

The PATCH endpoint allows the consumer to update a specific participant's payment parameters based on the participant id, that the consumer is authorised to. The Participant needs to pass the old values and the new values of all the attributes listed in the above diagram to be able to update successfully.

CREST Payment Balances:

CREST Payment Balances provides details of the CREST settlement attributes listed below. This endpoint allows the consumer to retrieve the CREST Payments Balances details based on the participant id, that the consumer is authorised to.

Notification Configurations:

Notification configurations are capabilities provided to the participants to manage their notification preferences by opting in or opting out for each notification type including: window open, window closed, queue blocked, queue unblocked, account report failed, TAB boundary breached and task notifications, with some exceptions. Task, queue blocked and queue unblocked notifications are mandatory. This endpoint allows the consumer to retrieve/update a participant organisation's notification configuration preferences detail based on the participant Id, that the consumer is authorised to. If a participant has opted in to receive notifications via either UI or SWIFT (or both), they will also be able to retrieve those notifications via API channel. The participant needs to pass the old value and new value, to be able to update successfully. Note: The participant Id can be obtained using the '/participants' endpoint. To get more information about Notification types refer to Notifications API page here.

Tasks:

Participants API may require Multi Step Review based on Participant's configuration. When an Update request is submitted the Participant will be returned a Task ID for every successful request RTGS receives. This Task ID can be used by the Participant to check the progress of the Update request. Once the request has reached its closure and if it is successful, Participant will be able to see the updates by retrieving the CHAPS Payments Controls. The various statuses a Task would go is explained in detailed in the Tasks API.

When Multi Step Review is enabled and the Participant has submitted the Update request via API channel, it mandates another user from the respective organisation to go to BERTI UI application and approve the Task requested via the API channel. In case Multi Step Review is enabled along with Dual Input required, the approver of the Task will have to key in the new values again. Dual Input Attempt field tracks the number of attempts when an approver performs blind dual input. Blind dual input is to allow an approver to input the same values as the requester without seeing what they have inputted. An approver has a total of 3 attempts to blindly input the same values as the initial API request post which the update request will be rejected.

Filter Values:

The Participants API has various fields thats have a predefined set of values e.g. Scheme Code, etc. To retrieve the possible values of all these fields Participants can use the Filters API Get Resource by passing the relevant Resource Name of the field. For detailed information around fields thats have a predefined set of values across all RTGS API please refer to the following page Filter Values API.

Participants API Use Cases & Benefits

• Automated retrieval of Organisation details and associated key configuration parameters
• Automated management of payment and notification parameters
• Fuels innovation
• Reduction of manual effort
• Cost saving
• Integrated user experience

Supported Developer Toolkit:

Bank of England RTGS APIs will be supported by Swift Microgateway and Swift SDK.Both solutions, provided by Swift, offer access to the APIs. Bank of England hosts a reference implementation based on Swift Microgateway and we can help you start with the API connectivity using this option.

If you are already a user of any of these solutions, just download the API Specification and follow the Swift recommended steps to import it into your implementation.