Tradier Blog

APIs Can Disrupt Financial Services

Written by Jason Barry | Apr 23, 2014 4:00:00 AM

Over the last 5 years we've seen a growing number of enterprises adopting open API strategies. It took time, but larger companies have broken the molds of proprietary software solutions and adopted service oriented solutions culminating in APIs that are consumable by the masses.

Financial technology has its share of deeply entrenched technologies. The FIX protocol, developed in 1992, has been used as the standard way to connect financial institutions. It's been widely adopted and is still in use today by brokerages, exchanges, funds, clearing firms and many market makers. FIX is a good solution for back office communication between institutions, but should not be considered for mass consumption.

Widespread adoption of REST-based, open APIs from companies like Facebook, Netflix, and Twitter created an innovative culture around their products. It fostered a mindset that public APIs can create better partner and consumer channels. The culture grew into service industries such as telecom with Twilio, and Stripe with payments where modern technology and open standards built brand new lines of business. It’s time for financial services to embrace that innovation culture.

At Tradier, we fully encourage the innovation culture. We focus on delivering investing services capability through modern, REST and streaming APIs. We work directly with entrepreneurs and developers to enable capability in their platforms and products. It is our goal to provide the tools necessary, to all who want them, to disrupt the financial services industry.

To learn more about Tradier’s API, please visit https://developer.tradier.com.