CHAPS is the UK’s electronic payment system for high value and systemically important transactions which settle across the Bank’s Real Time Gross Settlement System,thereby achieving irrevocable finality at the point of settlement. Payment obligations between direct participants are settled individually on a gross basis in RTGS on the same day that they are submitted. For more detailed information on CHAPS, visit the CHAPS section of the Bank of England's main website.
This API is usable by CHAPS Direct Participant organisations. They can use the API to retrieve a list of settled transactions using various query parameters. The API also provides the capability to retrieve an individual transaction in MX format. The key information returned for the transactions is Settlement Date/Time, Creation Date/Time, UETR, Instructing and Instructed Agent IDs, Amount, Currency, Status and Type. This information can be used by the Direct Participants to analyse their CHAPS activities.
A Direct Participant can also retrieve a bulk list of settled transactions for any day within the last twelve months, together with key metadata. This Bulk CHAPS Raw Payment Message endpoint will also return an identifier for each transaction. This ID can be used in the Single Raw Payment Message endpoint to retrieve the full raw MX payment message (base64 encoded).
API Use Cases
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.