Could APIs be the great payment equalizers? One major payment company is ready to take that chance in an effort to expand the reach of its services.
APIs are promising to deliver significant changes to the way financial companies operate. Some of the most notable investments witnessed over the last few weeks include solutions that can help businesses file invoices electronically, fight fraud and process reimbursement requests with greater ease.
Investments in API technology over the last month are delivering new services to a variety of companies, with much of the activity seen in the banking sector. The July B2B API Tracker™, a FI.SPAN collaboration, explores how API solutions are helping companies address the needs of small businesses, simplifying payments and expanding the services that various businesses can offer to their clients.
Here’s a snapshot of some notable recent B2B API news:
Some of the bigger names in banking stepped up their API investments over the last week to offer a range of new services.
Some financial institutions rolled out API tools to speed up the pace of financial reimbursement. Take Wells Fargo, which launched a new mobile expense report management system that allows businesses to automatically input and process data from work-related printed receipts. Other API solutions, like the one offered by software firm Abacus, focus on improving the security of the reimbursement process. The company recently launched an integration with Capital One’s Customer Transactions API that accesses account information using tokenization to help make the reimbursement process flow quickly and securely.
Other API solutions released in recent weeks offer new ways for banks and businesses to manage their funds. Citizens Bank and Bottomline Technologies, for instance, recently collaborated to produce a corporate banking platform that aims to help reduce instances of fraud in digital corporate payments. Meanwhile, another new payment solution, this one from Mastercard, is aimed at helping small- to medium-sized businesses rely less on paper checks to process payments. The new offering from Mastercard, known as B2B Hub, enables SMBs to electronically process commercial invoices in lieu of issuing paper checks to make payments.
Trading plastic payment cards for APIs
Mastercard’s investment in APIs does not end there. The company is making heavy investments in APIs after years of investing in plastic payment cards. For July’s B2B API Tracker feature story, PYMNTS spoke with Oran Cummins, Mastercard’s SVP of APIs, about how the company’s API investment strategy is allowing it to expand into new services, beyond what payment cards can offer and how these services help the company work toward its goal of expanding financial inclusion to 500 million people by 2020.
Take a look inside the July B2B API Tracker™ for the feature story, along with all the latest news and trends from around the space.
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To download the July edition of the PYMNTS.com B2B API Tracker™, click the button below…
About the Tracker
The PYMNTS.com B2B API Tracker™, a FI.SPAN collaboration, serves as a monthly framework for the space, providing coverage of the most recent news and trends, along with a provider directory highlighting the key players contributing across the segments that comprise the B2B API ecosystem.