Fintech players team on API ecosystem

A collection of fintech players, including Nasdaq, Yodlee, Tradier and Level39, have joined forces to create an ecosystem that connects developers with APIs.

Spearheaded by market data cloud API specialist Xignite, the #FintechRevolution API Ecosystem initiative has secured 22 founding members, including providers of workflow, analytics and data APIs, as well as several fintech incubators.

The member companies are working together to promote the development of fintech APIs through sharing research and data, marketing best practices, and joint events. The APIs are integrated in a catalogue, powered by Xignite, to give developers easy access.

Xignite argues that the industry is already seeing the creation of a new de-facto ecosystem, made of interlocking APIs and services that are used to power a new generation of financial applications. By formalising this, users can take advantage of the best APIs available while helping member firms collaborate and grow.

"The fintech industry has experienced phenomenal growth in the last couple of years," says Stephane Dubois, CEO, Xignite. "This initiative consolidates the best of the best in the fintech API ecosystem. It will now be easier for firms, large and small, to start and grow financial services and fintech companies just by leveraging the APIs in the ecosystem."

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Yodlee Inc Nasdaq Xignite Level39

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This is an initiative that has the potential to truly change the financial services landscape. There is no reason really, that financial services API cannot become as standard as the USB connector or even a power plug/socket.

Banks are conspicuous by their absence in this initiative. The UK government has shown tremendous leadership and forsight in mandating that the banking industry come together and evolve as set of standard API that will allow access to customer data, to significantly increase competition among financial services providers, and more importantly, enhancing convenience for bank customers.

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Ketharaman Swaminathan - GTM360 Marketing Solutions - Pune 18 September, 2015, 16:19

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Neither in this article nor in a related one earlier Making sense of the government’s banking API initiative do I see any reference to voice of customer regarding extent of their data that can be be shared outside their bank via this API. So I'm assuming that there's isn't any provision for customer opt-in at all. In that case, this is a privacy and data security nightmare. I'm happy that banks aren't selling their customers out by backing this initiative (at least not yet!). While fintech companies will stand to benefit from this API, question is, at whose cost? I also echo the comment of @FinexraMember below the aforementioned post: "Can the govrenment show us the stats that prove there is pent-up consumer demand for this?"