Postman fuels innovation for Axis Bank with new product releases tripling

Postmanaut working with Axis Bank A P I. Illustration.

About

Axis Bank is an established bank that has fully embraced a digital transformation by moving to the cloud and adopting an API-first approach. Headquartered in Mumbai, it is the third-largest private-sector bank in India.

It serves the public sector, individuals, and businesses of all sizes. The financial services offered include corporate lending, investment banking, and wealth management. Axis Bank has an international presence with offices in Singapore, Dubai, Dhaka, and London.

Since 2020, Axis Bank's newly formed Digital Business and Transformation (DBAT) team has implemented considerable change, especially in API utilization. New products are all built using a microservices architecture. Postman APIs have enabled innovation for the payments app which is continually launching new financial services, for example, digital wallets for children.

Results

Reduced development pipelines from 6 months to 1 for some products

Decreased onboarding time by 80% from 10 days to 2

Enhanced developer communication time to hours from days


Postman fuels innovation for Axis Bank

The Challenge

Communication was a real challenge for the DBAT team, with API inputs and parameters being shared over Slack. It would take days to exchange information which slowed down development.

API documentation was scattered in several places, including Microsoft Word, Confluence, and Google Docs. Onboarding was laborious as time was spent searching for API documents. It could take up to 10 days to onboard new team members, which was a major pain point, especially as teams scaled.

Teams across Axis Bank could not easily share API changes. A common problem for the DBAT team was inadvertently building integrations on out-of-date APIs. This proved problematic for development, delaying the release of products in the form of new bank account types and financial services.

When APIs were built, the QA team faced further obstacles in testing. The development product pipeline could take up to six months or more.


Postman accelerates product releases for Axis Bank

The Solution

Moving to the Postman Enterprise plan was a necessary step in the ongoing digital transformation journey of Axis Bank.

The Postman API Platform is a savior for collaboration. Its understanding and relationship with the developer community are unparalleled.

Sanjay Jain, Chief Technology & Product Officer - DBAT, Axis Bank

Deploying the Postman API Platform allowed API documentation to be centralized. This has been particularly beneficial for the QA team, who can quickly leverage documentation in Postman to test APIs. And this is one of the many reasons that the timeline for the development pipeline has been shortened. When required the DBAT team can also share documents with a public URL.

Collaboration has been enhanced with Postman Collections and workspaces for the product, frontend and backend teams. Collections have streamlined the API design phase by making it easier to visualize the future state of APIs.

Now, when the DBAT team works with partners on integrations, they share collections. Postman has enabled the DBAT team and its partners to work in parallel on development using publicly published APIs.

Release cycles have been shortened as development has accelerated with Axis Bank and its partners leveraging Postman features. The number of integrations being built has increased substantially.

Testing multiple iterations of an API using data files, such as CSV or JSON, is now possible thanks to the Postman Collection Runner.

Postman is the one-stop API utility that provides everything on one plate that lets us cook up new products. I'm addicted to Postman, without it, I would be lost.

Mehul Agarwal, Associate Director - DBAT, Axis Bank

The Business team can quickly and independently test, verify and sign off new releases by accessing collections. Everything is in one place with Postman, it's the single source of truth for APIs. There is no reliance on other teams which has expedited new product releases.

Postman mock servers have eliminated dependency on the DevOps team for frontend engineers. Now, mock servers spin up directly from Postman, further increasing the pace of development. Frontend engineer productivity increased as mock servers are now a base for development.

The popularity of Postman—with its 30 million users—made it the first choice for building Axis Bank's Open API platform which has a public domain.

Additionally, Axis Bank chose to build a design system using Postman. Partners can immediately use the same UI components, creating a seamless customer experience.


The Outcome

Using Postman has meant that for some products, the development pipeline has been shortened from six months to one. In Axis Bank's history, it has never had more products developed and released simultaneously.

Our product launches have skyrocketed with Postman because it does all the heavy lifting. Innovation has gained unprecedented momentum.

Sanjay Jain, Chief Technology & Product Officer - DBAT, Axis Bank

In the first year of the Postman Enterprise plan being fully deployed five products were launched. In the following year, a total of ten products were released. And for the third year, at least 15, possibly more, products are set to be launched.

Axis Bank has created a 100% cloud digital journey that is totally API driven. Customers can open a bank account online in less than 30 minutes. It is an entirely automated process that has eliminated long waiting times for customers.

With Postman, we deliver not only on time but before time as the platform's features have dramatically improved developer productivity.

Mehul Agarwal, Associate Director - DBAT, Axis Bank

Furthermore, a considerable amount of time is saved as changes are instantly reflected in APIs. Everyone is working on the most up-to-date API version.

If something is failing, anyone can test, which saves time as there is no reliance on other teams. Communication has improved as conversations no longer take days. Onboarding times have been accelerated from 10 days to 2 as documentation is available on one platform. In some cases, onboarding can be completed in one day.

As the developer experience has improved Axis Bank has seen tangible business benefits. One of the biggest successes has been a partnership with Flipkart that has seen more than two million Axis Bank credit cards sold.

The Postman Enterprise plan keeps on delivering for Axis Bank with ongoing support from the Postman Customer Success team and platform capabilities covering security, governance, domain capture, and more.

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