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API News Round-up – November 2021

API News Round-up November 2021

Did you know some of our greatest content doesn’t live here on the blog? Axway experts often share their knowledge at conferences and in webinars, or when commenting on current events in the digital transformation world.

Here are some op-eds and news stories you may have missed in November, along with top API stories from around the web this month.

80% of consumers have a third-party financial app connected to their bank account

A PYMNTS and MX collaboration, Sharing Bank Account Credentials With Third Parties: Convenience Versus Security, analyzed findings from a survey of 2,368 U.S. consumers who hold primary checking or savings accounts.

More than half of those consumers say three factors influence how comfortable they are sharing their bank account credentials:

  1. Trust in their financial institution to protect their financial assets;
  2. the belief that the connections are secure;
  3. trust in the third party facilitating those connections.

The findings echo Axway’s own research into consumer attitudes toward open banking, where people expressed concerns about security, yet 40% said they use at least one finance or budgeting app other than their bank’s mobile app.

“People hear that word ‘open’ and think, as could be expected, ‘the entire world is going to be able to see my banking transactions, and that worries me!’ But in fact, open banking would give people significantly more control,” says Eyal Sivan, Axway’s Head of Open Banking.

Sivan adds that open banking is actually a more secure way of enabling the experiences many fintechs are already creating and will help build the needed trust to power these apps.

  • Also this month in #OpenBanking news: Flinks announced it is launching a new product called the Open Banking Environment (OBE), in collaboration with the National Bank of Canada. The new environment will allow fintech startups to securely access consumer data from financial institutions without the need for screen-scraping. Sivan says it represents a major step forward in Canada’s Open Banking landscape.

Five things to remember when upgrading your legacy solution

InfoQ writes that the lion’s share of organizations still relies on existing infrastructure combined with new technology. While they gradually move towards new infrastructure and keep the company operation running using old technology, Axway Chief Catalyst, Brian Pagano, suggests that defining your objectives is an ideal opportunity to check whether your framework supports your business plan or if a part of your framework keeps you from accomplishing your business objectives.

“What to consider? Do you even need a replacement for the system in question? First, check if there are more modern ways to solve the problem. We tend to repeat past behavior. Is this problem still relevant? These are the top questions executives should prioritize first,” says Pagano.

Read more about running research when upgrading legacy solutions on InfoQ.

BNPL continues to grow with lenders banking on US holiday spending

FinLedger shared news of the latest lender to generate excitement in the market: Zilch, a London-based Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) lender, which enables the installment purchases at any online store, announced raising a $110 million Series C funding round led by Ventura Capital and Gauss Venture.

While the BNPL market is expected to reach $166 billion by 2023, its usage is also expected to nearly double this holiday season over last, rising from 1.3% in 2020 to 3% in 2021. PYMNTS writes many large retailers are investing in BNPL solutions to drive spending throughout the end of the year (read more here).

As guest author Bruno Cambounet shared on the Axway blog last month, BNPL depends on a whole chain composed of different, highly specialized services — including APIs — and shows the extent of the different specialties that must be combined to create real value for the end customer. Click here to read why he believes the customer relationship is only the tip of the iceberg in Open Finance.

How a self-service approach can boost healthcare customer satisfaction

An Axway piece on Healthcare Dive shares how automation will power the future of healthcare:

“The right API management platform can automate and orchestrate processes, free developers from repetitive work, and enhance organizational agility. By delivering a low-effort experience to patients and employees, healthcare organizations can overcome today’s biggest challenges and seize the future’s biggest opportunities.”

Read more about how open platform API management can provide the autonomy development teams need while maintaining central governance here.

Banks will double down on innovation in 2022

Senior Forrester Analyst, Aurelie L’Hostis, predicts that after a faster-than-expected recovery of the global economy, “leading banks will embrace a future fit technology strategy and accelerate their end-to-end digital transformation to compete and survive in an increasingly unpredictable, post-pandemic world.”

What’s noteworthy is a prediction that open banking and open finance will start reshaping financial services for good in 2022, as banks wake up to both the opportunities and threats they represent. Read the full predictions from Forrester analysts here.

Speaking of banks waking up to opportunity, Axway Catalyst and Business Program Director, Emmanuel Methivier writes in Finyear that innovation in the financial ecosystem will require Open Finance. He argues APIs are at the heart of digital transformation, and traditional banks have their backs against the wall as neobanks innovate and commercialize new ideas faster and more nimbly than ever before while providing a rich customer experience.

Methivier says banks must rethink their business model, or risk seeing their services improved upon by companies in other sectors. Read the article on Finyear (in French).

Mr. Open Banking on how to stay relevant in a shifting economy

Axway’s Head of Open Banking, Eyal Sivan, echoed that message during his interview on the Leaders in Finance podcast in November: “Banks must adopt open banking in order to remain relevant,” Sivan said. He also shares a more personal side of himself, discussing how he got his start in IT thanks to his father. Listen to the interview with host Jeroen Broekema here.

If you’re looking for more audio content, check out a recap of the latest Transform IT Forward episodes. In an interview with Daphne Hoppenot, events industry expert and founder of The Vendry, she talks with Axway’s Paul French about how the events industry was one of the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how focusing on digital event design and a platform model were key to survival.

The platform model as a vehicle for exponential business growth

In another piece on France’s Silicon.fr, Emmanuel Methivier discusses how adopting a platform model offers many companies exponential growth opportunities.

“In this new paradigm, the company benefits by positioning itself as a platform, a digital marketplace. In doing so, it no longer simply sells its own products and services, but integrates the sale of other companies’ products and services into its model,” Methivier writes.

He adds companies cannot adopt a platform model without APIs, as they allow companies to facilitate ecosystems by opening up their data and making them compatible with each other through standard components.

Read Emmanuel Methivier’s article on the platform model here (in French).

  • One way APIs are fueling growth: In a Black Friday story in Cyber Protection Magazine, Joel Reid, Axway’s UK&I VP/General Manager says APIs are bridging the virtual world and the last mile to elevate the customer experience. “Consumers no longer have to imagine the possibility of watching their favourite TikToker unboxing the latest product and having that same product delivered to their doorstep just a few hours later,” Reid writes, “This is already a reality.”

API security “arms race” heats up

APIs are a remarkable vector for growth, yes, but adopting technology without secure processes can be catastrophic, as Peloton learned earlier this year. Venture Beat reports that API calls are now the new surface area for attack and need to be part of an organization’s overall security strategy.

“By 2022, the vast majority of web-enabled apps—90%—will have more surface area exposed for attack in the form of APIs than via the human user interface, according to Gartner research.” Read more on Venture Beat

Dark Reading also notes that cybercriminals are ramping up attacks on web APIs, with the majority of malicious activity now focused on Web application programming interfaces.

As Axway Catalyst, Erik Wilde, points out, securing APIs is an essential aspect of API management. He recommends examining your organization’s approach to API security by looking at the OWASP API Security Top Ten most common issues.

State of the API and State of Software Quality Deep Dives

Finally, Nordic APIs offer some useful analysis, and summaries of API reports published this fall.

A Deep Dive Into Postman’s 2021 State Of The API Report shows the API economy is booming, with Postman reporting over 834 million API queries in 2021, a 56% increase from the previous year. A growing number of companies also report investing heavily in API-first development.

Meanwhile, an analysis of SmartBear’s 2021 State of Software Quality Report looks more closely at trends in API tools, technologies, and methodologies. It highlights how standardization and security are primary concerns of API practitioners, and that 61% of respondents believe microservices will strongly drive API growth.

Profiles of Leaders in Digital Transformation

Axway’s Ruby Raley, VP Sales, Healthcare and Life Sciences, was named one of the ten most successful women leaders of 2021 by Industry Era. The publication shares a profile of her work and advice for creating brilliant digital experiences. Raley also shares the importance of being an advocate for others around her:

“I believe in modeling how to be professional and direct to accomplish your goals. I always advocate for fellow female colleagues and give them recognition and corporate-wide attention through Axway’s internal recognition platform,” said Raley.

Read Ruby Raley’s profile here.

Finally, Axway CEO Patrick Donovan says unlocking data is the key to opening up new possibilities in a new profile in Brazilian magazine The Winners.

“In today’s world, companies compete for the customer experience, the partner experience, the developer experience, and even the employee experience,” said Donovan.

Read his thoughts on innovation and accountability to the customer experience, as well as why he believes the future is “Open Everything,” in Donovan’s profile, here (published in English and Portuguese).

That about wraps it up for our November API News roundup, thank you for reading, and stay tuned for more API headlines next month!

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