FX Rates Guide - CrossFX Payment APIs

CROSSFX API · FX RATES

Show the current rate before a sender commits.

Fetch the current effective rate for a supported currency pair without creating a quote or starting a transfer.

Use it for calculators, indicative pricing screens and corridor checks where generating a full quote would be premature.

Indicative rate Per currency pair Timestamped No quote created

How it works

Request one base currency and one target currency. CrossFX returns the effective rate for that pair together with the time the rate was struck.

BASE

USD

Currency you are pricing from

→

CROSSFX

Effective FX rate

effective_rate

→

TARGET

KES

Currency you are pricing into

Per-pair lookup

Submit one `base` and one `target` currency and receive the rate for that pair.

What the sender would receive

The response is not a raw market mid. It reflects the effective rate a sender would receive for that pair.

Know when it was struck

The response includes `timestamp` so your application knows when the returned rate was produced.

When to use FX Rates

Use the FX Rates API when you need pricing visibility without creating a transaction.

Show an indicative rate

Display the current pair rate on a landing page, calculator or pre-transaction screen.

Refresh without quoting

Update an indicative rate ticker without consuming a quote or generating a new transfer identifier.

Validate before building

Sanity-check that a pair can return a rate before building a transfer flow around it.

IMPORTANT

An FX rate is not a quote.

The FX Rates API does not create a cbtx_tracking_id and its rate cannot be redeemed. Only the Generate Quote Guide flow creates a quote that governs the transfer.

Before you start

Use a valid bearer token

See the Authentication Guide.

Use recognised currencies

See the Sandbox Data & Testing Guide for the currency pairs recognised in Sandbox.

Fetch the latest FX rate

Latest effective rate

`GET /api/v1/fx-rates/latest`

Open the API Reference for the full request and response schemas and an interactive console.

REQUEST & RESPONSE

Send base and target as query parameters.

The response returns base, target, effective_rate and timestamp.

Business rules

A few pair-resolution rules are important when building against this endpoint.

NOT REDEEMABLE

Rate ≠ quote

Only Generate Quote issues a cbtx_tracking_id. The quote rate is the rate that governs the transfer.

CASE SENSITIVITY

base is case-sensitive

USD can resolve where usd returns 404. target is matched case-insensitively.

PAIR AVAILABILITY