Article by Jeff Pruitt
These six ventures are reshaping the infrastructure in the financial services sector. Find out how.
Financial technology is no longer a complicated, boring niche reserved to a small group of tech titans in Silicon Valley. It has become a rapid-growth sector in the tech industry - one that isn't losing steam.
Now popularly known as fintech, it generally refers to new ventures that are applying technology to solve a problem in the financial industry. The problems these innovators are solving have trended around creating a better customer experience whether in budgeting and banking, lending, purchasing, wealth management, or funds transfer.
While many companies in this sector flew under the radar for several years, they're now starting to gain mass appeal in the mainstream. The industry has leveled up in a sense with some savvy fintechs developing APIs (application programming interfaces) that are connecting the dots between various players in the financial services ecosystem, allowing them to collaborate in ways that previously didn't seem possible.
Here is a look at six making waves in the industry and reshaping the relationship and experience consumers and businesses have with the financial services sector.
Apex
Robo-advisor might sound like a villain out of Terminator, but it's actually an online wealth-management service that applies automation and algorithm-based technology to portfolio management advice. One fintech making a name for itself in robo-advisory is Apex Clearing, an online clearing firm. Other fintechs have glommed onto the company's suite of APIs to enable their users to enter, review, and settle account transfers between financial institutions.
Apex's API is now being used by other notable fintechs like Wealthfront, Betterment, Robinhood, Stash, and Personal Capital. And it has enabled them to give their users a complete online and paperless experience, standardize transfer procedures, reduce operating costs, and speed transaction settlements. This fintech made a name for itself early on by adapting quickly to the evolving needs in the digital advice space.
Fidor Bank
Fidor Bank is an all-digital bank based in Germany that launched in 2009 in an effort to re-establish the lost confidence consumers had in banking. The founders did so with customer-focused services and by empowering customers to have a voice in the bank's decision-making processes. As a result, it's since been labeled as one of the most innovative banks and has received numerous awards for its disruptive, transparent approach to banking and its fintech activity.
They further clinched their place in the industry with fidorOS, their suite of white-label, API-enabled application modules for digital banking. Through their database of more than 40 APIs, they're allowing banks and fintechs to build apps on top of their systems.
Developing this infrastructure has helped secure Fidor's longevity in the industry. Countless fintechs and banks are now relying on Fidor APIs for things like banking, payment processing, card and user management, sign-on and identification, loyalty and rewards management, money transfer, lending, and the list goes on.
Xignite
Xignite was created for sourcing and integrating real-time market data into apps and devices geared towards wealth management. This Silicon Valley startup has helped ignite fintech innovation by enabling its more than 1,000 financial services clients to provide trade data - pricing and volume on stocks, bonds, options, or futures - and corporate earnings information to the end user.
Xignite currently has more than 43 APIs used by notable fintechs like Betterment, Wealthfront, Yodlee and Personal Capital. Major financial institutions and exchanges such as NASDAQ, NYSE Technologies, and Direct Edge are also using the company's private data distribution solution.
Plaid
In a nutshell, Plaid enables applications to sync with their users' bank accounts to track and manage their budgets, and transfer funds. Plaid's API essentially serves as the connecter between banks and fintechs, and it's currently being used by several popular brands like Venmo, Gusto, TransferWise, Charity Water, Venmo, Gusto, TransferWise, Charity Water, Robinhood, and Level Money.
For example, Robinhood, a stock-trading app, uses Plaid's ACH (automated clearing house) authentication to verify a user's account ownership, check balances, and facilitate the funds transfer. Similarly, Gusto uses Plaid's ACH functionality to power its payroll direct deposit service. Beyond ACH, other fintechs like Level Money are using Plaid to aggregate and clean data from the user's various bank accounts and adding helpful context to help them budget and manage their money.
Dwolla
When Dwolla first came on the scene it was focused on getting customers to use its mobile app to pay businesses. They quickly realized it was their ACH API that was really making waves. Now fintechs are using Dwolla's API to enable peer-to-peer funds transfer between various banks. They took it a step further, white labeling their payment integration and now fintechs like Kill Bill deploying Dwolla into their native platforms to facilitate payments.
SPARROW
SPARROW started in the military space and has expanded into e-commerce, education, travel, medical, and other sectors with its payment technology. The company has since developed a series of open APIs for managing one-time and recurring ACH, automate tokenization, e-commerce, mobile payment processing, and secure redirect payments.
Of course, there are a handful of the long-time players like Square, PayPal, Google, and Apple that are continuing to revolutionize the financial services industry. Established banks like Deutsche Bank and Barclays have also embraced the API revolution, hosting hack-a-thons to encourage innovators to build new fintechs using their APIs.
The moral of the story? If you're looking to break into the fintech space, keep in mind there are two sides of the equation: those building the infrastructure and those leveraging it to reshape the user experience. And there's plenty of room for innovation in both.
Read the original article at Inc.com
Partners with ESG Book to Drive Investor Sustainability Engagement
SAN MATEO, Calif., April 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Xignite, Inc., the leading provider of market data APIs to brokers and wealth managers, announced the launch of a new Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) data API in partnership with ESG Book, a global leader in ESG data and technology. Xignite's brokerage, wealth, and media customers can now increase user engagement and retention with state-of-the-art sustainability trading products.
As ESG investment has gone mainstream, today's digital investors, institutional investors, and corporations alike require ESG data to help them answer questions that range from a company's workforce diversity to its commitment to a net zero future. In this context, brokers and wealth managers can use ESG data to increase client engagement around their portfolios and differentiate their offerings in a very fragmented marketplace.
"We are thrilled to extend our highly scalable and advanced API platform to include ESG Book's real-time sustainability dataset. With the recent SEC announcement of proposals for climate disclosure, the momentum for sustainability data in the U.S. just keeps on building. If you do not offer ESG data and portfolio analytics to your clients today, you will run into growth and retention challenges," said Stéphane Duboi, the CEO of Xignite.
Dr Daniel Klier, CEO of ESG Book, said: "As capital markets transition towards a more sustainable, net-zero future, demand for accessible, comparable and transparent ESG data has never been higher. We are delighted to be partnering with Xignite, a global leader in API solutions, to deliver our real-time ESG data products to clients at both speed and scale through the latest cloud technology."
Xignite's new ESG API is designed to fast track the launch of ESG powered products. Transparent, well-structured and easy to understand ESG datasets eliminate the need for robust in-house ESG expertise. Advanced screener endpoints further simplify development by eliminating the need to maintain a database.
XigniteGlobalESG API covers a comprehensive universe of public companies domiciled in North America, EMEA, APAC, and Latin America. In addition to ESG scores, this API provides Global Compact scores, involvement data, temperature scores, and raw emissions data.
About Xignite
Xignite is the leading provider of market data API solutions to brokers, wealth managers, and the tech firms who serve them. Xignite has been disrupting the market data industry from Silicon Valley since 2003 when it introduced the first commercial REST API. Today, more than 700 firms use Xignite's APIs more than half a trillion times a month to deliver high-value data to digital investors. Visit xignite.com or follow us on Twitter @xignite.
About ESG Book
ESG Book is a global leader in sustainability data and technology. Through a cloud-based platform, ESG Book makes sustainability data more widely available and comparable for all stakeholders, enables companies to be custodians of their own data, provides framework-neutral ESG information in real-time, and promotes transparency. It counts many of the world's leading financial organisations among its clients, which collectively manage over $120 trillion in assets. www.esgbook.com
04/12/2022
Sales Up 50%. API Volumes Now Exceed Half a Trillion per Month.
Xignite, Inc., the leading provider of market data APIs to brokers and wealth managers, announced that 2021 was a banner year for its business. Xignite experienced more than 50% growth in new client bookings over 2020. Most of this growth was fueled by heavy demand from new brokerage and wealth management applications as more firms entered the business. Xignite also saw a 53% increase in API consumption to a whopping half a trillion requests a month - driven mainly by increased activity from digital investors as they consumed more and more data during the pandemic.
The Digital Investor Revolution was created by the convergence of zero-cost trading, fractional shares, working from home, the pandemic, and the emergence of a new and more powerful generation of retail investors. This has created significant momentum in trading and wealth management, primarily US-based equity and options trading. And it has fueled the entrance of a considerable number of new prominent players in the field, especially embedded finance providers. It all came to light in early 2021 with the Reddit and Gamestop phenomenon. But it has not proven to be short-lived. The transformation could be profound. Indeed Xignite saw its momentum accelerate in Q4-2021, with bookings growth exceeding 310% over the same quarter in 2020.
“Xignite is one of the oldest and most scalable commercial API infrastructures globally. It’s not a surprise that our clients have grown to rely on us for their mission-critical business needs,” says Stephane Dubois, Xignite’s CEO and Founder. “It’s not only the mind-numbing volumes that we have to deal with,” adds Dubois, “It’s also the 4-nine+ level of availability we deliver day in and day out coupled with the awesome market data quality and the high touch responsiveness of our support teams. These metrics matter to large embedded finance firms entering the business or legacy firms migrating to the cloud. They spend tens of millions of dollars entering the business. They don’t want to see it evaporate because of poor data quality or API availability.”
About Xignite
Xignite powers the investing apps and services that enable millions of people to manage their portfolios and trade stocks from a phone or tablet with the industry’s best financial market data APIs. We help more than 700 fintech trading, investment, and analytics firms like Robinhood, SoFi, and Betterment provide digital investors with the market data they need, such as real-time stock prices and company news. Visit xignite.com or follow on Twitter @xignite.
03/10/2022
Xignite, Inc., the leading provider of market data APIs to brokers and wealth managers, announced the launch of a new cryptocurrency data API. Xignite’s brokerage, wealth, and media customers can now increase the value and stickiness of their services to digital investors by taking advantage of the depth and breadth of data offered by this API.
Investment in cryptocurrencies has increased dramatically over the last few years and has proven to draw new investors into the world of trading. As a result, brokerage companies are trying hard to make buying, selling, and holding Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), and other cryptocurrencies as easy as possible for their clients. The XigniteCrypto API is the first to bring together a vast universe of cryptocurrency information alongside the equity, ETF, and option data brokers and fund managers need to offer high-quality services to their clients. It also provides the depth of functionality required for them to engage customers and drive trading activity
“Cryptocurrencies tend to operate in their own world,” said Stephane Dubois, CEO, and Founder of Xignite. “This means that if you want to offer integrated equity, option, and crypto trading or analytics for your clients, you are going to have to cobble up a lot of heterogeneous data from many disparate sources, and that’s a pain,” adds Dubois. “With our new crypto API, you get the depth of coverage, the quality, and the reliability across all asset classes you need to grow your business - all in one integrated solution.”
Xignite’s new cryptocurrency API, XigniteCrypto, provides real-time and historical quotes for over 900 cryptocurrencies, including coins and tokens. It includes unique API endpoints that help firms engage digital investors, using the data and tools they need to make crypto trading decisions, including price alerts, historical charting, currency conversion, and cryptocurrency news.
About Xignite
Xignite is the leading provider of market data API solutions to brokers, wealth managers, and the tech firms who serve them. Xignite has been disrupting the market data industry from Silicon Valley since 2003, when it introduced the first commercial REST API. Since then, Xignite has continually taken advantage of new technologies to help its clients grow their business and serve their customers better by using financial market data effectively. Today, more than 700 firms use Xignite’s APIs more than half a trillion times a month to deliver high-value data to digital investors. Visit xignite.com or follow on Twitter @xignite.
02/15/2022
Xignite, Inc., a cloud-based market data distribution and management solutions provider for financial services and technology companies, announced a new Vendor of Record service for clients subscribing to real-time and delayed market data. The new service vastly simplifies the administration and reporting required by exchanges and often eliminates the need to pay redistribution fees, potentially saving clients thousands of dollars a month.
As an approved Vendor of Record, also called a Service Facilitator, Xignite can redistribute real-time and delayed equities and options pricing data from Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Options Price Reporting Authority (OPRA), OTC Markets (OTCM), and the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX).
Adhering to the complex compliance guidelines required by exchanges is extremely difficult for investment advisers, financial advisers, or order management software providers that need to display real-time or delayed data. Each exchange has its own unique set of regulations and compliance requirements, and clients need to prove that they have control over who receives the data, in what format, and for what use case. Xignite’s Vendor of Record service eliminates the administrative burden of tracking these complex compliance requirements.
The new service utilizes Xignite’s cloud-native Entitlements and Usage Microservices to give firms complete control and transparency of their data consumption and usage. Xignite provides data entitlements, usage tracking, and exchange reporting across various data sets, users, and applications to ensure exchange compliance. Xignite’s new service sometimes eliminates the need to pay expensive redistribution fees. Exchange fees for display data, regardless of the number of users, can cost upwards of $10,000 per month. These high fees are especially difficult for smaller financial firms with just a few real-time data users.
“Maneuvering through the maze of required compliance policies, entitlements, usage tracking, and reporting requirements, and being subjected to frequent audits is no easy feat,” said Vijay Choudhary, Head of Product for Xignite. “Xignite’s mission is to “Make Market Data Easy.” Today’s announcement is another step towards this. We are taking away the administrative burdens and complexity of licensing market data and allowing our clients the freedom to focus on their investment and trading strategies and building innovative products.”
Xignite’s Vendor of Record service is available for professional users with internal and display-only use cases. The service is available now as an add-on service for subscribers of our real-time and delayed equities and options pricing data APIs. These include:
About Xignite
Xignite has been disrupting the financial and market data industry from its Silicon Valley headquarters since 2003 when it introduced the first commercial REST API. Since then, Xignite has continually refined its technology to help Fintech and financial institutions get the most value from their data. Today, more than 700 clients access over 500 cloud-native APIs to build efficient and cost-effective enterprise data management solutions. Visit xignite.com or follow on Twitter @xignite.
09/21/2021
