APIs Have Become FinTechs’ Keys to the Money Mobility Kingdom

Consumers have grown to expect seamless and innovative payment experiences, and FinTechs are delivering. But they also face competition as financial institutions (FIs) and even device manufacturers such as Apple innovate how consumers can send and receive funds. To stay competitive, FinTechs must develop an innovation strategy featuring application programing interfaces (APIs) to bolster money mobility.

“The Money Mobility Playbook: An API-Based Innovation Guide for FinTechs,” a PYMNTS and Ingo Money collaboration, explores how FinTechs can use APIs for money mobility innovation — allowing them to provide clients and consumers with new, secure ways to move money in and out of their financial accounts seamlessly. The playbook examines how FinTechs can select the right API and technology solutions platform to support payments and disbursements innovation globally using any currency or device.

Defining Money Mobility: The Seamless ‘Any-to-Any’ Payment

Money mobility is theoretically straightforward — a consumer’s or organization’s ability to move funds to or from any account, using any connected device, currency or payment method. Achieving money mobility, however, requires access to money mobility networks — those of FIs, FinTechs and other payment service providers — that are connected and able to speed transactions securely and efficiently at any time, at scale.

FinTechs have often led these innovations, helping businesses and consumers gain money mobility through their products, and FinTechs’ ability to remove friction from transactions is key to their mass appeal. The ability to offer any-to-any money inflows and outflows is essen­tial for FinTechs seeking to engage and retain consumers and businesses accustomed to rapid, seamless pay­ments and disbursements.

How FinTechs Are Leveraging APIs to Speed Money Mobility Innovation

When used as a conduit for the benefits of a money mobility network, an API can allow FinTechs to give clients and their customers access to powerful money mobility features. While the “wow” factor may appeal to consumers seeking easier ways to manage their funds, true money mobility is based on much more than quick and easy transaction management; it requires a comprehensive, regulatory compliant and globally accessible technology stack that manages every aspect of payments processing and compliance.

Often the simplest way for FinTechs to deliver the benefits of a money mobility network is to use an API, according to the report. An API provided through a money mobility network allows FinTechs to simply connect their product or service to offer clients a range of features that the network offers, even if the FinTech has yet to develop a mature tech stack.

Using an API from the right partner, Fin­Techs effectively have access to money mobility in a box: the ability to provide any-to-any payments and disbursements to clients while gaining the benefits of advanced fraud and compliance tools.

APIs Make Secure Money Mobility a ‘Plug-and-Play’ Feature

Though innovation often comes with risk, a money mobility network accessed through APIs allows FinTechs to benefit from the network’s ability to mitigate risk using advanced technology. The most sophisticated money mobility APIs utilize powerful data networks that leverage rich historical data, optimizing the speed and accuracy of identifying bad actors and potentially fraudulent trans­actions.

A money mobility network-connected API not only makes it simpler for FinTechs to identify risk, but also helps them scale their business. When a FinTech’s audi­ence rapidly grows, developers can leverage broader capabilities to create new products that are compliant, scal­able and customizable from day one. That saves FinTechs time and resources during development and rollout while ensuring that new products are built on a tech­nology foundation that is not limited by developers’ ability to reinvent a product as an audience grows.

Learn more about how FinTechs can leverage money mobility by downloading the playbook.