The financial technology space is fascinating. Over the years, we’ve witnessed that a new tech paradigm or a novel business model takes time to get acceptance. But even with one or two successful events, a whole segment in FinTech could take off like crazy. Financial infrastructure APIs is one such segment – Visa had acquired Plaid for $5.3 billion. Everyone and their grandpas are talking about it. We have been tracking this space for six years. In 2013 and 2014, no one cared about it, but from 2015 onwards, we started seeing interest. In the last two to three years, with the rise of open banking, APIs in general and financial infrastructure APIs, in particular, have been of much interest. APIs have helped FinTech companies and even larger companies by not having to build entire stacks by themselves. By using specific APIs, startups are now able to go to market sooner by focusing on their core areas. APIs have also allowed small companies to compete with larger incumbents by solving problems that the larger establishments ignored or were not able to address. I believe it was the CEO of Kantox that said very astutely that “the megatrend in financial services is neither FinTech nor blockchain, but the shift from batch to real-time.” And this is possible with financial infrastructure APIs. |
