91 percent of financial institutions plan to work with FinTech providers to deliver a better customer experience and generate more revenue.
PayPal, Venmo, Stripe, PayPal, Payoneer... The list of FinTech services that address the gaps left by traditional banks grows exponentially every year.
With APIs turning into the linchpin of the digital economy and citizen development becoming more prevalent, organizations need a way to consolidate their API assets in one place and provide a robust ecosystem for developers and business units alike to consume API products.
That's where API portals come in.
In this article, we'll discuss how API portals can transform the FinTech industry and provide tips on choosing the right API portal provider for your needs.
What Is an API Portal?
An API portal is an ecosystem that enables developers and non-technical users alike — from the C-suite to data analysts and marketers — to access and consume APIs.
By bringing API products to the general public and making them easily accessible to business units, API portals are the next evolution of traditional developer portals.
API portals go beyond the standard features of developer portals, like listing available APIs, providing API documentation, and creating a place for developers to communicate, by offering them these unique features:
Productization Tools – From advanced signup workflows to API product bundling, API portals allow organizations to productize their APIs with a strong market fit to increase the value of API assets.
Development Tools – API portals provide try-it-now and CI/CD integration tools to to ensure updated accurate ocumentation to versioning information which is proven to boost adoption rates.
Advanced Access Control (RBAC) – Eliminate the need to build multiple portals and control the view and consumption of APIs from a single portal. Plus, seamless single sign-on (SSO) integration allows organizations to have granular control over regions, divisions, departments, partners, and more.
Internationalization – API portals empower organizations to penetrate international markets, providing them with all the tools to quickly adapt API products to foreign markets.
A great example of an API portal is Apiboost. This comprehensive solution offers the features organizations need to build a robust API ecosystem, including API monetization capabilities, Teams & Groups for managing user privileges, and Single-Sign-On (SSO) for enhanced security.
The need for API portals will only grow as APIs permeate all industries, and the organizations that adapt quickly will reap most of the benefits.
Read More: The Ultimate Guide to API Portals in 2022
What Are the Benefits of API Portals for FinTech Companies?
The benefits that API portals offer to financial institutions are much greater than those that are offered by the typical developer portal.
1. Meet Regulatory Compliance and Standards Requirements
Financ91 percent of financial institutions plan to work with FinTech providers to deliver a better customer experience and generate more revenue.
PayPal, Venmo, Stripe, PayPal, Payoneer... The list of FinTech services that address the gaps left by traditional banks grows exponentially every year.
With APIs turning into the linchpin of the digital economy and citizen development becoming more prevalent, organizations need a way to consolidate their API assets in one place and provide a robust ecosystem for developers and business units alike to consume API products.
That's where API portals come in.
In this article, we'll discuss how API portals can transform the FinTech industry and provide tips on choosing the right API portal provider for your needs.
What Is an API Portal?
An API portal is an ecosystem that enables developers and non-technical users alike — from the C-suite to data analysts and marketers — to access and consume APIs.
By bringing API products to the general public and making them easily accessible to business units, API portals are the next evolution of traditional developer portals.
API portals go beyond the standard features of developer portals, like listing available APIs, providing API documentation, and creating a place for developers to communicate, by offering them these unique features:
Productization Tools – From advanced signup workflows to API product bundling, API portals allow organizations to productize their APIs with a strong market fit to increase the value of API assets.
Development Tools – API portals provide try-it-now and CI/CD integration tools to to ensure updated accurate documentation to versioning information which is proven to boost adoption rates.
Advanced Access Control (RBAC) – Eliminate the need to build multiple portals and control the view and consumption of APIs from a single portal. Plus, seamless single sign-on (SSO) integration allows organizations to have granular control over regions, divisions, departments, partners, and more.
Internationalization – API portals empower organizations to penetrate international markets, providing them with all the tools to quickly adapt API products to foreign markets.
A great example of an API portal is Apiboost. This comprehensive solution offers the features organizations need to build a robust API ecosystem, including API monetization capabilities, Teams & Groups for managing user privileges, and Single-Sign-On (SSO) for enhanced security.
The need for API portals will only grow as APIs permeate all industries, and the organizations that adapt quickly will reap most of the benefits.
Read More: The Ultimate Guide to API Portals in 2022
What Are the Benefits of API Portals for FinTech Companies?
The benefits that API portals offer to financial institutions are much greater than those that are offered by the typical developer portal.
1. Meet Regulatory Compliance and Standards Requirements
Financial institutions, including credit unions and banks, are required by law to manage their customer data responsibly ands must adhere to government regulations such as the USA Patriot Act and various European Union directives such as PSD2 and GDPR.
API portals can help meet these obligations by providing access to all sensitive data through a single secure interface, making it easier to promote organizational conformity to regulatory standards.
With advanced access controls and all API assets centralized in one place, API portals make it easier for organizations to meet compliance requirements by ensuring that all documentation and access is up-to-date and accurate.
2. Increase Adoption Rates
Increasingly, organizations rely on third-party APIs to enhance their applications' core functionality, from identity resolution to credit checks.
That's why a transaction can go through a dozen APIs before it reaches its destination.
APIs can be integrated into those long process chains, but only if they are accessible enough for developers and business units to use.
The issue becomes more pressing with the rise of citizen development, the practice of creating and deploying IT solutions to involve non-IT users in the software development decision chain.
The API portal bridges that gap by simplifying how APIs can be accessed and used without a steep learning curve or lengthy approval process, drastically increasing adoption rates.
Read More: Bridging The Gap With API Portals
3. Safely Leverage the Power of Open Banking
Open banking allows banks and other financial institutions to control the sensitive financial information that is shared with FinTech companies and other partners.
FinTech startups and big banks can both benefit from open banking, as it allows banks to expand their reach, establish additional revenue streams, and personalize their banking services.
Conversely, FinTech companies gain access to essential financial data to power their innovative solutions.
Open banking offers numerous benefits but requires that financial institutions follow very strict compliance guidelines - again, made much easier with an API Portal handling all of the APIs within the organzation
While open banking has been gaining traction over the past few years, many institutions are still falling behind, with FinTech pioneers cutting into the profits and market share of established financial institutions.
If these organizations don't adapt to an API-first business model, they will keep missing out on new opportunities and find themselves left behind.
This is what's driving digital transformation for most financial organizations - they fell behind the Robinhood of the world, and now they're scrambling to catch up.
Since open banking entails revealing an APIs endpoints to the world, this brings with it increased API security risks that can lead to disastrous consequences if left unaddressed.
4. Maximizing the Value of the Existing Infrastructure
Banks and other financial institutions have complex well-tested systems in place to keep operations running and help with tasks such as processing payments or managing user accounts.
In today's application-driven marketplace, many of these FinTech groups don't have the resources to recreate these tools at scale.
So it makes sense for these app-driven groups to leverage APIs to enhance their product offering and increase revenue for the larger institution.
API portals open up new opportunities for FinTech firms to integrate existing assets into their solutions, bringing in additional revenue and increasing the ROI their data generates.
Banks can use an API portal to gain a competitive edge by expanding the services and reaching new or changing markets. In many cases financial institutions are falling behind their competitors by not offering these services.
With API portals, banks can also integrate their own branded payment card with the APIs from other companies so that users have access to a broader range of services at any time.
How to Choose the Right API Portal for Your Needs
Now that you know the massive value that API portals can bring to your financial organization, it’s essential to understand how to go about the process of analyzing your API portal needs and choosing the right development partner.
The first step is to accurately define your audience and their needs. The following questions will help you get an accurate picture of your target user base and what they’re looking for:
Who is your audience? Are your existing and potential partners already using another API - or are you expanding your capabilities to your legacy clients to avoid losing them?
What’s the size of the FinTech companies you’re going to be working with?
What does your audience know about your institution? Do you need to work hard to get on their radar?
Do they have one developer or hundreds of specialists that are going to need API access?
How did they discover your API - Google, advertising, or your outreach?
What do you want your audience to know? Maybe you have a high-volume, low-margin product that drives them to your API portal. Yet, once they've connected to that initial product, you may want them to discover ten other APIs to expand your business and improve margins.
Is your product low maintenance or will you need to communicate regularly with your developers to make sure they have the latest and greatest?
Do you require your users to go through an approval process? Is that process manual? Think about it: your user base is here to automate, and when you put them through a ten-day phone call-driven approval process, you better hope you're the only game in town.
Pro tip: don't ask your IT department to design your API portal. Remember what happened when they were in charge of your company website?Once you have clearly defined your audience and their needs, here are a few tips to help you choose the right API portal:
Define your needs and requirements: What do you need an API portal for? What features are most important to you? Make a list of your needs and priorities and use them as a guide when evaluating different solutions.
Prioritize user-friendliness: Since an API portal is meant to be accessible to non-technical users by design, it should be easy to navigate and understand.
Know your options: Do you want to build an API portal from scratch - or is an established API platform provider your best option? Your IT team will most likely suggest building an API portal in-house since it's very tech-heavy. Yet, if you look at your competition, you will find the leaders have very sophisticated user-friendly portals that were not built by their IT group. Apiboost is one of them.
Take security extremely seriously: Data breaches are destructive for any business, but in the FinTech world, a successful cyberattack has the potential to sink your entire company. Make sure your API portal solution offers advanced security measures to protect your users with specialized API security testing tools such as APIsec.
Explore the availability of training and educational materials: Check whether your potential partner offers training sessions or other resources like webinars and workshops. Educational materials are critical to ensure your API portal consistently grows its user base.
Ensure multi-language support: There are many benefits to choosing an API that supports multiple languages, making it easy to adapt your offerings to foreign markets. A multi-language API portal allows users from all over the globe to create applications that work in different regions.
Look for solid reporting capabilities: Your API portal should provide powerful data reporting and analytics features. Tracking information like download rates, traffic levels, and other metrics can help you determine how to improve your offerings.
Think about the future: As the competition evolves and your organization increases the adoption of open banking, is your portal ready to adapt to new technological challenges in the future?
In this article, we've discussed the importance of API portals for FinTech companies.
With APIs powering the entire digital economy, choosing an API portal provider becomes a mission-critical task.
Instead of taking chances, remove the guesswork altogether by partnering with Achieve Internet.
With over two decades of experience helping companies of all sizes accelerate digital transformation in one form or another, we developed Apiboost, a subscription-based API portal solution that makes it possible to deploy an API portal within just 2–4 weeks.
Let us know if you have any questions or need additional information about API portals or API management by contacting us directly. obligations by providing access to all sensitive data through a single secure interface, making it easier to promote organizational conformity to regulatory standards.
With advanced access controls and all API assets centralized in one place, API portals make it easier for organizations to meet compliance requirements by ensuring that all documentation and access is up-to-date and accurate.
2. Increase Adoption Rates
Increasingly, organizations rely on third-party APIs to enhance their applications' core functionality, from identity resolution to credit checks.
That's why a transaction can go through a dozen APIs before it reaches its destination.
APIs can be integrated into those long process chains, but only if they are accessible enough for developers and business units to use.
The issue becomes more pressing with the rise of citizen development, the practice of creating and deploying IT solutions to involve non-IT users in the software development decision chain.
The API portal bridges that gap by simplifying how APIs can be accessed and used without a steep learning curve or lengthy approval process, drastically increasing adoption rates.
Read More: Bridging The Gap With API Portals
3. Safely Leverage the Power of Open Banking
Open banking allows banks and other financial institutions to control the sensitive financial information that is shared with FinTech companies and other partners.
FinTech startups and big banks can both benefit from open banking, as it allows banks to expand their reach, establish additional revenue streams, and personalize their banking services.
Conversely, FinTech companies gain access to essential financial data to power their innovative solutions.
Open banking offers numerous benefits but requires that financial institutions follow very strict compliance guidelines - again, made much easier with an API Portal handling all of the APIs within the organzation
While open banking has been gaining traction over the past few years, many institutions are still falling behind, with FinTech pioneers cutting into the profits and market share of established financial institutions.
If these organizations don't adapt to an API-first business model, they will keep missing out on new opportunities and find themselves left behind.
This is what's driving digital transformation for most financial organizations - they fell behind the Robinhood of the world, and now they're scrambling to catch up.
Since open banking entails revealing an APIs endpoints to the world, this brings with it increased API security risks that can lead to disastrous consequences if left unaddressed.
4. Maximizing the Value of the Existing Infrastructure
Banks and other financial institutions have complex well-tested systems in place to keep operations running and help with tasks such as processing payments or managing user accounts.
In today's application-driven marketplace, many of these FinTech groups don't have the resources to recreate these tools at scale.
So it makes sense for these app-driven groups to leverage APIs to enhance their product offering and increase revenue for the larger institution.
API portals open up new opportunities for FinTech firms to integrate existing assets into their solutions, bringing in additional revenue and increasing the ROI their data generates.
Banks can use an API portal to gain a competitive edge by expanding the services and reaching new or changing markets. In many cases financial institutions are falling behind their competitors by not offering these services.
With API portals, banks can also integrate their own branded payment card with the APIs from other companies so that users have access to a broader range of services at any time.
How to Choose the Right API Portal for Your Needs
Now that you know the massive value that API portals can bring to your financial organization, it’s essential to understand how to go about the process of analyzing your API portal needs and choosing the right development partner.
The first step is to accurately define your audience and their needs. The following questions will help you get an accurate picture of your target user base and what they’re looking for:
Who is your audience? Are your existing and potential partners already using another API - or are you expanding your capabilities to your legacy clients to avoid losing them?
What’s the size of the FinTech companies you’re going to be working with?
What does your audience know about your institution? Do you need to work hard to get on their radar?
Do they have one developer or hundreds of specialists that are going to need API access?
How did they discover your API - Google, advertising, or your outreach?
What do you want your audience to know? Maybe you have a high-volume, low-margin product that drives them to your API portal. Yet, once they've connected to that initial product, you may want them to discover ten other APIs to expand your business and improve margins.
Is your product low maintenance or will you need to communicate regularly with your developers to make sure they have the latest and greatest?
Do you require your users to go through an approval process? Is that process manual? Think about it: your user base is here to automate, and when you put them through a ten-day phone call-driven approval process, you better hope you're the only game in town.
Pro tip: don't ask your IT department to design your API portal. Remember what happened when they were in charge of your company website?Once you have clearly defined your audience and their needs, here are a few tips to help you choose the right API portal:
Define your needs and requirements: What do you need an API portal for? What features are most important to you? Make a list of your needs and priorities and use them as a guide when evaluating different solutions.
Prioritize user-friendliness: Since an API portal is meant to be accessible to non-technical users by design, it should be easy to navigate and understand.
Know your options: Do you want to build an API portal from scratch - or is an established API platform provider your best option? Your IT team will most likely suggest building an API portal in-house since it's very tech-heavy. Yet, if you look at your competition, you will find the leaders have very sophisticated user-friendly portals that were not built by their IT group. Apiboost is one of them.
Take security extremely seriously: Data breaches are destructive for any business, but in the FinTech world, a successful cyberattack has the potential to sink your entire company. Make sure your API portal solution offers advanced security measures to protect your users with specialized API security testing tools such as APIsec.
Explore the availability of training and educational materials: Check whether your potential partner offers training sessions or other resources like webinars and workshops. Educational materials are critical to ensure your API portal consistently grows its user base.
Ensure multi-language support: There are many benefits to choosing an API that supports multiple languages, making it easy to adapt your offerings to foreign markets. A multi-language API portal allows users from all over the globe to create applications that work in different regions.
Look for solid reporting capabilities: Your API portal should provide powerful data reporting and analytics features. Tracking information like download rates, traffic levels, and other metrics can help you determine how to improve your offerings.
Think about the future: As the competition evolves and your organization increases the adoption of open banking, is your portal ready to adapt to new technological challenges in the future?
In this article, we've discussed the importance of API portals for FinTech companies.
With APIs powering the entire digital economy, choosing an API portal provider becomes a mission-critical task.
Instead of taking chances, remove the guesswork altogether by partnering with Achieve Internet.
With over two decades of experience helping companies of all sizes accelerate digital transformation in one form or another, we developed Apiboost, a subscription-based API portal solution that makes it possible to deploy an API portal within just 2–4 weeks.
Let us know if you have any questions or need additional information about API portals or API management by contacting us directly.
