Understanding Application Program Interfaces APIs

Technology is fundamentally changing the way financial services are delivered. Financial services customers and the institutions that serve them are increasingly adopting innovative technologies and relying on them to secure and streamline their financial interactions. Mobile access and the digitization of traditional services have brought about an explosion in the amount of financial data being created by each customer. As banks continue to digitize their offerings, they produce ever increasing amounts of data, which provide opportunities to deliver new innovative services. However, with this unprecedented amount of information also comes the need to securely and consistently transmit it between bank systems and third parties.

Traditionally data access has been facilitated either by expensive systems integrations or a process known as screen scraping. Many banks have serious concerns with screen scraping, as it requires customers to forfeit their login credentials and may expose them to risks that the customers do not fully understand.

APIs, short for Application Program Interfaces, are one way to address this challenge. APIs serve as a universal adaptor for data, allowing for more secure transmission of data between systems in a standardized format. This empowers customers to share financial data without forfeiting their bank user credentials. It also allows banks to provide customers with control over the access and use of their data, and transparency about how that data is used – all with bank-level security.1Additionally, APIs can enable banks to quickly integrate third-party services into their existing systems to offer customers the latest technologies.

Learn More

• Understanding APIs is a supplement to the Fintech Playbook.
• View Understanding APIs at a Glance.