Digital Lego for a Connected World: Embedding Financial Services Through APIs

In today’s hyperconnected digital economy, no company is an island. Businesses thrive when they become part of a broader ecosystem—and APIs are the glue that holds these ecosystems together.

APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are like digital Lego, enabling companies to exchange data and services in a standardized, automated way. When well-designed and thoroughly documented using standards like OpenAPI, they reduce friction in integration, making partnerships easier to establish and more reliable to operate. But APIs alone aren’t enough. They are merely the channel to digital services—what lies behind them is just as critical. Software quality, including strong performance, security, scalability, and resilience, is essential.

When APIs from different players are orchestrated effectively, they create seamless, powerful user journeys. The financial services sector has already seen this through Open Banking and PSD2. While the scope and usage remain limited, these initiatives have triggered an API revolution. Banks began building developer portals, strengthening API security, and rethinking their digital strategies. As a result, partnerships with Fintechs to deliver new, value-added services have become a key strategic enabler.

And we are only at the beginning of this (r)evolution. Ecosystems will continue to expand, leading to more embedded financial services, deeper Fintech partnerships, broader financial marketplaces, and even super-apps. At the same time, regulatory initiatives like the Financial Data Access (FiDA) regulation are encouraging financial institutions to expand their API catalogs. This will enable cross-sector use cases where banks become invisible yet essential capabilities embedded in other industries’ digital experiences. The bank will no longer be a place—it will be a service embedded in devices, apps, and daily moments.

This API-first shift is already playing out across other industries. Netflix handles over 5 billion daily API calls. Travel giants like Expedia and British Airways use APIs to power integrations with partners. Uber became a tech giant by stitching together best-in-class APIs—for example, using iOS/Android for location, Google Maps for mapping, Twilio for messaging, Braintree for payments, and Mandrill for receipts. Uber’s brilliance wasn’t in building everything from scratch—it was in orchestrating existing services to quickly deliver exceptional user experiences. Eventually, Uber offered its own APIs, now integrated into apps like United Airlines. This cyclical model—consuming and exposing APIs—is what drives digital ecosystems.

If you’re a bank and you lack strong APIs to deliver your data to these service layers, you risk being left out of the ecosystem. APIs are not just enablers—they are catalysts. They accelerate the creation of interconnected and interdependent ecosystems, fostering cross-sector collaboration and increasing data and resource sharing. For financial institutions, embracing the API economy isn’t about monetization—it’s about survival. In a digital-first world, relevance hinges on the ability to connect, share, and evolve through APIs. A significant portion of bank sales will increasingly originate from API calls coming from other sectors’ websites. Opening up products and services via APIs is no longer optional—it’s a business imperative.

To speed up innovation and adoption, financial institutions must empower the developers who build on top of these APIs:

• Provide sandboxes and toolkits for rapid development
• Offer a well-documented developer portal
• Enable fast, automated onboarding for new API consumers
• Ensure a standardized, developer-friendly experience
• Track API usage patterns

This approach removes friction for smaller players and allows them to innovate without being slowed by red tape.

Looking ahead, banks must prepare for the next evolution. Today, developers integrate APIs into apps and workflows—often a manual, time-consuming process. But in the near future, AI agents will call APIs as if they’re interacting directly with companies. These agents will expect APIs to conform to universal standards, even without prior integration. One such standard is the open-source Model Context Protocol (released in early 2025 by Anthropic), which enables AI assistants to connect seamlessly with content repositories, business tools, and development environments.

In a world where AI agents increasingly handle human tasks, APIs will become their primary interface. This makes well-structured, accessible APIs the cornerstone of future digital engagement.