DEV Community: Mathilde Airvault

Why APIs are the secret ingredient for success with IoT

Mathilde Airvault — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 14:42:09 +0000

What is the collective term for all objects in the physical world? In 1999 Kevin Ashton chose to use the word ‘Things’. He coined the term Internet of Things (IoT) to convey the connection of all physical objects.

It also includes anything that sensors can be attached to. Like animals, humans, and plants. Where there is a sensor there is data. This data can be connected to the internet. Really it’s the internet of everything.

The Internet of Things has revolutionary potential. Mainly because of this easy access to data. It also is the foundation for increased automation. This in turn allows for:

Improved productivity and reduced labor;
Efficient operations, resources, and assets;
Improved safety;
Business insights that lead to new opportunities.
But what creates the connection between these ‘things’ and the internet? The answer: APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). Let’s explore how APIs are the unsung hero of the Internet of Things (IoT).

First, let’s look at how IoT operates to better understand APIs role.
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How does the IoT work?
The simplest way to break down IoT is by its 3 main components: inputs, analytics, and outputs.

The input comes from a device that gathers information from ‘things’ in the real world. This information comes through sensors or detectors. The information then needs to connect to the internet for analysis and output.

The heart of IoT is the ability of these diverse and varied components to communicate. By communication we mean the movement of data from an endpoint of a device through a network connection. APIs are the core of this technology. They create the ability for devices to connect to the internet.

The growth of IoT has greatly added to the growth of APIs. Equally, APIs are responsible for the growth of IoT.
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Examples of IoT supported by APIs
While the focus of IoT was originally for business and industrial applications, now personal applications are rapidly growing. In 2021 there are an estimated 35 billion IoT devices, with an additional 11 billion expected by the end of the year. IoT has an impact on every area of our lives.

In our personal lives, IoT is used with our devices, smartphones, wearable technology, fashion, and household appliances. The availability of this data allows us to create a quantified self where we will have a deeper understanding of every aspect of ourselves through data.

IoT impacts organizations through applications like remote monitoring and notification systems. This can improve security for staff and physical assets. More recently IoT is being used for smart cleaning and occupancy reporting in support of staff returning to offices during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Industrial uses of IoT are supporting equipment monitoring and predictive maintenance amongst many other things.

Finally, huge infrastructure changes are underway due to IoT. Our urban and rural environments are becoming increasingly ‘smart’. From our roads to railways, and from energy to water supply.

With the ability to reduce costs and increase quality, there is nowhere IoT is not being applied.

For APIs to support this rapid IoT growth, the management of these APIs needs to be carefully considered to create flexibility, scalability, and most importantly security.
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How APIs benefit IoT
The success of IoT depends on the efficiency of connecting data. APIs done well are the most efficient way to connect data, thereby enhancing the overall IoT value.

APIs provide a standard architecture for diverse applications and devices to communicate over the internet. They improve reliability and allow for effective ingestion, storage, and processing of the information received.

This requires your APIs to be structured and managed thoroughly.

On the other hand, if you do not manage and build your APIs correctly you risk creating an inefficient and insecure structure.

Effective API management should consider gateways, security, and access management.

Blobr’s developer platform is the best place to effectively manage your APIs. APIs can be uploaded in minutes with autogenerated documentation. You can customize access and pricing for your API. Most importantly the platform enables a secure connection.

Your APIs will be under constant surveillance on the developer platform. Blobr’s analytics provides a detailed and granular view of your APIs performance. You will know instantly if there are any anomalies or failures of your API.

Equally, if a developer creates a security breach or a customer behaves unexpectedly this will be easily detected. You will have increased control over your API endpoints. These endpoints can be dynamically modified to reduce the exposure of your entire business. Investigations will be conducted for any abnormal API calls.

On top of the advanced security features, Blobrs developer platform will enable high performance of your APIs providing near-instant communication between your devices. Finally, we have the infrastructure to scale with you as you find increasing ‘things’ to connect.
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How to set up your IoT APIs for success
IoT is predicted to change every aspect of our lives and IoT devices are only going to grow. The success of IoT relies on the successful management of APIs.

Without good API management, the growing number of connections will quickly lead to chaos. With every area of our lives being connected to the internet, security and reliability are crucial.

APIs should follow a standardized approach, and their use should be monitored closely for security breaches. At the same time APIs need to be flexible and scalable to adapt to the growing use cases. We can support your API setup and operations.

Our Blobr development platform (https://www.blobr.io/) will provide all the tools you need for successful management. Speak with us to find out more.

APIs and Marketing relationships you should know about

Mathilde Airvault — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 11:50:34 +0000

APIs (Application Program Interfaces) have changed the game of marketing in more than one way.

If you’ve heard about APIs' role in marketing, you’ve probably heard of what they can do as a new piece of technology. Things like:

automation,
dynamic display of content for different customers,
audience segmentation,
optimized ad management,
and detailed customer insights through data visualization.
If this sounds familiar it’s because these are use cases from Facebook ad’s API. Facebook advertising contributed 84.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, compared to 497 million U.S. dollars from all other revenue streams. No wonder people are talking about APIs and marketing.

Here at Blobr, however, we’re interested in 2 API marketing relationships that we think you should know about.

To understand these relationships we’ll start with some marketing fundamentals and show how to use them for success with your API. Next, we’ll use the same fundamentals to show how APIs themselves can be used as a marketing asset.
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Marketing fundamentals for APIs
Marketing is an art, not a science. There are layers of strategies that lead to successful marketing. While the online world has brought new innovations to marketing with data and social media platforms, the fundamentals of marketing haven’t changed. If you’re creating an API with the goal to generate income, you will need to market it. To highlight the unexpected relationships between marketing and APIs, let’s focus on 4 basic fundamentals and how to use them for your API.
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Who is your market?
The term customer obsession has been made famous by Amazon’s success. But marketing has always been about customer obsession. You have to deeply know and understand your market. From the size, demographics, psychographics, to what and how your product solves a problem for your customers.

When you know your market, you’ll know where to find them and how to speak to them. To successfully market your API you need to be crystal clear who your customers are. Especially if you need to market to both developers and business roles.

Make sure to tell the story of your API: what problem does it solve and what are the benefits of using it? Don’t focus on the technical features. Marketing is all about the ‘why’, not the ‘how’.

Having clear use cases for your API will help, with all the technical details outlined in the documentation. The Blobr developer portal auto generates use case documentation. This takes out all the guesswork for you and your customers.
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What are your marketing goals?
Marketing is the movement of potential customers through a funnel:

From awareness and discovery (top of the funnel)
To interest and consideration (middle of the funnel)
And finally decision and purchase (bottom of the funnel)
Marketing goals align with these stages. To understand the value of your marketing strategy, you need clarity in your goals.

Are you creating awareness for customers who know nothing about your product?
Or are you speaking to knowledgeable customers who want to make a final purchase?
To successfully market your API, you need to understand your marketing goals. This will help you select the best strategy for each stage of the funnel.

Premium vs Freemium model?
While there are many business models, let’s look at either end of the spectrum: premium and freemium. A premium model relies on a higher cost and lower sales. It requires a strong brand and reputation. Freemium is an offer of basic or limited features at no cost. Or giving away complimentary products and services. This model is good to connect with a large set of customers. It’s been very popular for software and internet-based businesses to build trust in entirely new offerings.

Your marketing model depends on the size of your market. For a large customer base, it can work to offer a low or no-cost option of your API. A smaller audience is better suited to a premium price, but there are lots of options in between. The Blobr developer portal allows you to customize the price and access of your API to match the model you choose.
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What experience are you creating?
No matter the size of your market, your goals, or your model, you will always need an excellent customer experience. Customer Experience (CX) has always been important. Now in the online world User Experience (UX) proactively removes issues for your customers. With the growing number of products for Developers, there is a new focus on Developer Experience (DX). DX is especially important for APIs.

An API portal like Blobr covers both the UX for your business customers and DX for your developer customers. It supports your customers every step of the way, from onboarding new API customers all the way to retaining them.
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How APIs can be used for marketing
Let’s connect the dots between our marketing fundamentals to see how they relate to APIs as marketing assets. Sharing an API is a way to connect more applications and customers to your ecosystem. This works even if an API is not your core product. APIs can attract new clients from partner applications. It is particularly useful where there is a large market. Especially for products that benefit from a network effect. This means the value of your product grows exponentially the more customers use it.

Uber offers a ride request API. This API is used by partners like Starbucks and TripAdvisor. These partners benefit by offering additional services to their customers. And Uber benefits from increased business and accelerated growth.

For this strategy to work, you need to create an excellent API experience. Focus on DX by providing all the tools developers need to integrate your API. Clear documentation and an easy-to-use developer portal will be critical to the use of your API. At Blobr our platform can be accessed in minutes and provides insightful usage data. Best of all, our developer platform autogenerates easy-to-follow documentation structured by use case. Use cases both help developers understand why they should use your API and reduces the need for customer support which is hard to provide at scale.

You’ll know this strategy is working through the data on how your API is used. You can clearly measure how many clients you’re acquiring through your partnerships.
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How to get started with your API marketing strategy
Start with the marketing fundamentals. When you know your market and have clear goals, choosing the right marketing model and strategy is much easier.

Find adjacent products to support you. You don’t have to do everything from scratch. Leverage partner companies to connect with new customers and find products that already solve your CX, UX, and DX challenges.

If you want to learn more about how Blobr developer portal creates a first-rate experience to share your APIs, from uploading them to auto-generated documentation and easy-to-use developer experience, speak to one of our experts.

What API Partnership to choose?

Mathilde Airvault — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 08:53:51 +0000

Businesses exploring APIs and developing an API strategy ask themselves: Private, Partner or Public APIs? Keep working with private APIs for a moment, before developing Partner APIs for specific business partners? When is then the right time to make APIs public to all?

And is there a good strategy afterall? We basically find private, partner and public APIs.
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Let's today focus on Partner APIs, what are they?
Partner APIs are B2B APIs that are exposed through a contract agreement between the business provider and the developer. In contrast to internal APIs, they go beyond the scope of the company since they are exposed to external companies. In contrast to public APIs, they are not available to the public but only accessible to a specific group of users.

Throughout this article, let’s put ourselves in the shoe of a company making its APIs available to external companies.

Since APIs have the power to expose data, they enable to connect business processes, content and data to partners in an easy and secure way. Among other things, APIs enable better customer experiences, faster business developments... Yet, API’s potential does not stop here. The possibilities are vast but one-off API strategies can be very costly to put in place and can jeopardise relationships with business partners. That is why an API Partnership must be well thought out.
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What would really motivate a company to go through the creation and development of an API Partnership Program?
A partnership program can open up many different opportunities. It can secure collaboration & innovation with business partners. Let’s dig into the opportunities - as a data provider - that you could provide to your clients. For each of the reasons hereafter, we will provide examples to illustrate.
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ENHANCE FINAL USERS' EXPERIENCE
‍Thanks to an API Partnership, a business can indeed enhance customer experience. The more data gathered, the more personalised the experience can be. Thanks to a rise in productivity, final users' experience drastically improves. They are not obliged to jump from one application to the other to make things work.
A. Facebook is a great example. Partners improve their user experience since it is now super easy for visitors to log on using their Facebook credentials. What is the result? Facebook is even more and more used by their members. Businesses using their clients’ Facebook’s accounts decrease the time to log in and increase their clients’ motivation to register.
B. An other example is Ticketmaster's Partner API. The company is an American ticket sales and distribution company. Thanks to their Partner API, they let clients reserve, purchase and retrieve ticket and related information.
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PROVIDE MORE STICKINESS TO THE SOLUTION
‍Solutions providing an access to their APIs through API contracts improve the stickiness of their solution. When an API is plugged to a client's, the convenience is very often increased and the probability to churn decreases. This can also increase customers' loyalty.
A. An example is Convelio, a fine art shipping company, offering a digital logistic solution to organise and track art shipments anywhere in the world. Thanks to their API, Convelio makes quotation requests easier to access. Companies using Convelio's service now have a widget popping up each time their own customers need a quote. That way, customers instantly know how much the travel would cost. Once a famous auction house is using the service, they can't stop using it so easily.
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FOSTER BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
‍Thanks to an API Partnership, a business can develop new ways of working.
A. The famous company that transitioned from mail-order DVD into an online streaming media system - Netflix - developed API partner initiatives. Their partners have the opportunity to use Netflix's value proposition to strategically expand their footprint.
B. Shopify gives the right tools to create an e-commerce website to drive more customers while managing day-to-day tasks in an easy way. Their API Partners can programmatically access the data found in their Partner Dashboard. This enables Partners to scale their business by automating their front and back office operations.
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ACQUIRE INNOVATION BRICKS AT LOW COST
‍Thanks to an API Partnership, a business can add significant features to its original product/ service.
A. With Stripe’s API, thousands of businesses added the payment functionality to their own platform. Whether the company builds a software for a specific industry, for HR specialists, accountants or students, partnering with Stripe helps foster innovation. This means increased revenue streams and potential international scaling. A client can now easily support multi-party payments.
B. At Omron Healthcare, they collect data from e-health and medical devices and their partners can buy them for different purposes. Among Omron's partners, State government epidemiology patterning organizations, provisioning of real-time health data to practitioners... Their partners significantly increase their original product/ and or product, thanks to the data that has been bought from Omron. An example is Walkingspree, an industry leader in providing activity-focused, digital health solutions to help motivate employees to be more physically active.
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Great! Now, how to begin with an API Partnership?‍
API partnership programs must be well thought out. Only mature enough companies are able to launch an API partnership program and make it work.

At Blobr, we believe any company should start with private APIs. That will help establish the right data architecture. They will ensure process automation inside the company. When the right architecture is in place, and if that makes sense for potential clients, the company can start opening up its APIs to Partners. The goal is to open APIs to existing partners with whom the company already built tight connections.

Once this has been achieved, what about opening up APIs to everyone? APIs open for everyone are called Public APIs. Among them, we have Commercial APIs and Open APIs. Commercial APIs are free to use, but often subscription fee or pay-as-you-go business model driven. On the other hand, Open APIs are public and can be used with less restricting terms and conditions.

The move toward openness (partner and public APIs) is favoured by customers. Yet, those APIs have to be well managed and treated as Products so that the integration is seamless.

Want to see Blobr in action? Our experts would be more than happy to understand your use-cases to provide you the best advice on how to share and/or monetize your APIs the right way.

How can APIs help overcome the tech skills shortage?

Mathilde Airvault — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 15:13:20 +0000

The great debate going around on Twitter and LinkedIn is 'Should workers return to the office'? In the US, over half the workforce are considered ‘knowledge workers’. These are ‘workers whose main capital is knowledge’ and are mostly able to perform their work online.

This is matched by the trend for digital transformations which has radically increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Statista, 65% of businesses have increased their digital transformations and it’s expected by 2023 digitally transformed businesses will be responsible for over 50% of the global GDP.

And yet, despite this global digital phenomenon and impact, it’s estimated less than 1% of the world's population can code. Before ‘work from home’ became the rally cry, the slogan ‘learn to code’ dominated the public and private sphere.

Forbes estimated a global risk of $8.4 trillion being lost in revenue as there were not enough technically able people to deliver on it.

No amount of coding boot camps can meet the need. Even if it was possible to close the technical skills shortage, there is a technical skills gap to contend with. As the demand for tech skills grows exponentially, the environment itself is changing too quickly for technically able people to adapt fast enough.

Instead, technology itself needs to be used in new and innovative ways to meet the challenge. Tech skills need to be packaged into reusable assets which allow their use no matter if you can code or not. Welcome your new teammates: APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).

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How to use tech skills effectively
APIs are already making work more efficient for developers. According to a developer survey, 61% of developers increased their use of APIs in 2020 and this trend is expected to grow to 71% in 2021. This is because APIs can be used like building blocks. Once the functionality has been created, it can be reused.

These same APIs can also be used outside of a technical team. All employees can benefit from APIs as they don’t need to know how the API works, only what it does and why they need it. Therefore technical skills aren’t needed as long as the APIs are available, easy to find and their purpose well understood.

Technically skilled employees should focus on producing API assets. As the rest of the organization uses these APIs, technical capacity and speed are increased while costs are lowered.

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4 ways APIs help overcome the tech skills shortage

APIs remove work from technical teams backlogs
When APIs are created as assets they can remove work from technical teams’ backlogs permanently. Each API should be created with a specific role in mind. With clear ‘jobs to be done’ each API can be used to solve business challenges and keep up with new opportunities.

This removes rework from technical teams’ backlogs and gives them the space to work on new features.

APIs reduce technical debt from legacy systems
There is a triple cost in maintaining legacy systems. There is a monetary cost and a human cost as legacy systems often require highly skilled expertise. The effort put towards maintenance is unavailable to support business growth. In addition, legacy systems may prevent the adoption of newer technology.

APIs can help modernize legacy systems and reduce technical skills wasted on technical debt.

Legacy services can be packaged as APIs in the same way new functionality is built. APIs can also connect new applications to legacy systems data, making them easier to interact with.

On top of that, ongoing maintenance is reduced through the use of APIs. As APIs are reused across a business, only one update is needed to improve all connected systems. It is also possible to automate diagnostics further reducing the need for technical skills to maintain legacy systems.

Give APIs an advantage with marketing

For the optimal use of APIs, they need to be shared widely and easily. Companies should promote their APIs to be used by partners and clients.

Marketing of APIs communicates their benefits. This is especially important for their use by nontechnical employees. As mentioned above, as APIs are created as assets, they can be used for their functionality without understanding how they work.

An API repository with good documentation can serve as a powerful API marketing. Successful API marketing will have the additional benefits of improved:

Security
Governance
Maintenance
And scalability

Leverage external APIs
While businesses transform their digital architecture with APIs, there is even greater potential through the use of external APIs. 3rd party APIs can remove the need to build and maintain your own technology stack.

On top of monetary and time gains through leveraging external APIs, there are also opportunity costs benefits. With all the potential business value from APIs, don’t let a skills shortage get in the way. Make use of external APIs and platforms for a fast turnaround and quality product.

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Tech skills reimagined as APIs
Jeff Bezos has made many visionary decisions that led him to pay for a trip to space. One of those was to ensure all engineers create APIs. Despite the tech skills shortage, he was so certain of this choice he threatened to fire anyone who didn’t.

If this insight is anything like the decisions that led a bookstore to become the leading online global retailer, Jeff saw how APIs can help overcome the tech skills shortage.

The demand for technical skills is constantly growing and changing. While it is impossible to scale technical skills, through the use of APIs companies no longer need to rely on a few highly skilled individuals.

Instead of training and recruiting millions of new engineers, enable your entire workforce through API products. An API system is dynamic with the flexibility to grow with demand. And you can free up your technical talent to work on functional gaps and innovation.
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To grow your business capability put all of the above in action. At Blobr, we help companies leverage their APIs and transform their end users' experience. Discover what is possible for your business, by talking to one of our experts at Blobr.

How does Blobr's developer portal help optimize API adoption rate?

Mathilde Airvault — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 15:12:03 +0000

Have you heard of the worst API (Application Programming Interface) ever documented? No one has. That’s because ambiguous APIs don’t get used.

On the other hand, APIs that clearly solve a need and are easy to use get a cult-like following. They spread by word of mouth with developers finding any reason to try them out.

To optimize your APIs adoption, clever technology isn’t enough. You need to stay focused on the developer’s needs, instead of the API features. More than that, you need to make it easy for developers to consume your API.

At Blobr, we’ve been working on the ultimate developer portal. We know that the easier it is for developers to integrate your API, the greater your success will be.

Our portal has your customer’s best interest at heart. We’ve built all the functionality your API needs so developers can easily access it, understand their use through simple documentation, and have instant access to their invoices and analytics.

Here’s how Blobr’s developer portal can optimize your API adoption rate.
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An integrated experience for your API consumers
Packaging a successful API isn’t easy. You need to deeply understand developers and provide an excellent integrated experience. The Blobr platform takes care of the biggest concerns for API consumers.

Scalable
The success of your API will mean a growing number of consumers. Blobr provides the platform for developers to access your APIs and support them. As your API becomes increasingly popular, our serverless infrastructure will allow your API to scale.

No interruption
With geo-redundancy, your data will be backed up in multiple locations. This means there will be no interruption if one site fails. It also makes your API available in every region. Developers can trust in your APIs reliability.

Speed
Customers are impatient. They expect a seamless experience and often quit if there are any lags or delays. Our platform ensures a low latency of less than 50 ms for speedy API delivery.

Security
API security is a major concern for companies. Our interface provides you with control over your API endpoints. And we use a granular approach to your exposed data. If there is a misuse you have the ability to dynamically modify the data without risking your entire business.

Together these features create an integrated infrastructure you and your customers can trust.

Next, let’s look at how your customers can access your APIs.
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Easy to access APIs
The first step for a developer to adopt your API is the access point. Blobr gives you the tools to package data providers’ APIs into products and make them available through a beautiful window.

Blobr’s development platform excels at ease of setup. Depending on your business model you can grant individual access or make your API available to anyone through registration.

Here developers can discover your APIs and try them out in a sandbox with no risk or cost. Developers benefit from the ease of use and clarity of what is available.

The interface is simple and easy to use for end developers. Providers can add an API to Blobr and make it available in 2 minutes. Consumers can take as little as 5 minutes to access and integrate an API product.

As a Blobr client or partner, you can use this portal directly to manage your account, API subscriptions, and API keys for your products.

Once a developer has found your API, they should have the lowest barriers to use it, which means simple and easy-to-follow documentation.
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Automated, simple to follow, API documentation
API documentation is how developers will interact with your API. It is therefore the most critical element for success. It can also be one of the biggest investments in the creation and maintenance of your API.

At Blobr we take an innovative approach to API documentation. The traditional approach to API documentation uses a dictionary format. This makes it difficult and time-consuming to navigate.

We’ve reimagined documentation to be arranged by use cases. Documentation is now more like a phrasebook which makes it easier to navigate and shorter. The end developer can clearly see the benefits of the API and why it’s beneficial to their work.

The innovation doesn’t stop there. Document creation can be extremely time-consuming to create. Plus there are the expenses of hiring a technical writer and working with the business and development team to understand the API use case. This is precious time that could be spent on more technical work.

To solve this challenge, Blobr has created a knowledge base of documentation for each use case. This modular approach allows you to automatically generate your API documentation in this user-friendly style. It also removes all the costs associated with creating and maintaining documentation.

The best part is that you can define exactly what you want to be included in your documentation based on the data points you select.

Finally, based on research done by our developers, we also present our documentation as a workflow. This makes it easier to understand, which leads to optimal API adoption and integration.
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Instant access to invoices and analytics
With our analytics features, you and your customers gain instant insight into how well your API is working. Understand exactly how your API is being used, monitor consumption, and discover who your most valuable users are. These measurements can help optimize your API adoption.

Analytics are displayed in a dashboard which increases developers’ confidence in the reliability and availability of your API.

Consumers’ subscription costs are completely transparent. They can access all of their invoices in one place with a detailed breakdown of their use.

Equally, providers are able to configure and adapt their approach to monetization with real-time measurements and tracking.

These insightful measurements of your API usage will help you improve, grow and innovate your API products.
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Why use Blobr’s developer portal
Developers don’t want to spend time reinventing the wheel. They want to integrate pre-built APIs that solve their problems. They also want to know the best ways to use your API.

With our workspace, you can create, control and analyze APIs that solve developers’ needs. In the developer portal, they can be accessed, understood, and integrated in minutes.

The Blobr developer portal provides everything your customers need to integrate your APIs:

Secure, reliable, and fast infrastructure that scales
Self-registration for consumption of API products
Automatically generated, use-case oriented API documentation
Insights on API usage and transparent invoicing
These features are a huge benefit to your API individually. But the real benefit is the combination of these features altogether. They provide a solid infrastructure for your API success. Let our Blobr developer portal take care of all your API needs so you can focus on developing new API products.

Start a free trial to test out Blobr by yourself or speak to one of our experts to find out more.

How's the Open Banking initiative changing the financial landscape?

Mathilde Airvault — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 08:58:08 +0000

Open Banking is disruptive and growing at an unprecedented pace. As of 2020, 24.7 million individuals worldwide used open banking services, a number that is forecast to reach 132.2 million by 2024.
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First, what's Open Banking?
A bit of history: The economic crisis (2007-2008) and the lost of trust in banks confirmed the need for a change. The EU adopted the proposal for the Payment Services Directive (PSD1) in 2007 to increase competition and choice for consumers in the financial sector. A second initiative was born in 2015 (PSD2) to improve the first initiated and create safer and more innovative payment services. PSD2 came into force in 2018. Under PSD2, AISP (Account Information Service Providers) and PISP (Paiement Initiation Service Providers) need to abide by the rule. Being an authorised AISP means that the business can ask for permission to connect to a bank account and use that bank account information to provide a service. Being an authorised PISP means that the business can ask for permission to connect to a bank account and initiate payments on the customer’s behalf, from their bank account.

How to link PSD2 and Open Banking then? Open banking is a term that was born when PSD2 came into play. It refers to making customer account information available to Third Party Providers (other banks, FinTechs, credit agencies, tech companies... either registered as AISP or as PISP) via APIs. This opens access to customers' consumer banking, transaction and other financial data. Uses can include: aggregating customers' accounts so that customers get an overview of their different accounts, comparing the customer's accounts and transaction history and provide them financial insights, allowing lenders to get a complete overview of applicants' credit history. The term "Open Banking" is actually going beyond the PSD2 scope and is as well the opportunity for Banks to go beyond the scope of the regulation only.
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Well, what's then the promise behind "Open Banking"?
The promise behind Open Banking initiatives is to develop an ecosystem which is prone to generating business, solving needs, encouraging innovation and granting customers access to more and more financial choices.
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What are the main tangible benefits to expect from Open Banking initiatives?

I. Increase digital earnings
‍Open Banking APIs not only satisfy and improve third party providers' revenue, they also give financial institutions a new way of increasing their digital revenue. Those can stay competitive by exploring data-sharing agreements with Fintech Companies and other Third Party Providers. Let's deep dive:
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A. Financial Institutions
It may be compliance matters that pushed banks to invest in Open Banking. Yet, there is no doubt the initiative greatly benefits financial institutions.

For instance, from the beginning of the Open Banking API initiative, Citi has been connecting with many different players to better engage with customers. Such engagement led to better customer engagement. As an example, the bank partnered with Hong-Kong based e-commerce platform HKTVmall. On that e-commerce platform, customers can conveniently pay for their purchases at checkout using Citi reward points without leaving the digital platform. The experience is seamless.

Foreseeing huge opportunities, ABN AMRO is on the pursuit to open up valuable digital building blocks from their IT landscape. The bank has even released a clear pricing model for their Tikkie API. That API enables customers to generate payment requests for Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C) propositions.

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B. Fintechs
There are very different fields in which Fintech companies are benefiting from Open Banking APIs. Among them, a few examples:

Personal Finance Management - Smart Budgeting
Businesses can have access to users' bank accounts' transactions. Savings platform Plum offers financial insights and allows its users to set spending caps and receive recommendations on how to save money.

Account Aggregation
‍Ember makes accounting effortless for business owners. They grant business owners a central place for all of their business transactions: automating all of users' finances, accounting and tax.
‍Curve lets users connect their debit and credit cards. This way, a user never has to switch banks. All cards become contactless and work with Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay.

Automated Accounting
‍Yappily allows businesses to seamlessly connect their banks with their accounting providers to get real-time cash flow visibility, streamline account reconciliation and manage invoice payments.

One-off payments
‍Coupay allows freelancers to collect payments from their customers in a few clicks.

With access to banking APIs, FinTechs increase their earnings and provide users with opportunities to enhance their financial & digital lives.
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II. Improve customer engagement
‍Open Banking APIs improve how appealing financial institutions/ applications are to customers. They are better able to satisfy the needs of existing customers and better able to attract new customers. Services can be centralized, customers can better transact, save, borrow, invest etc.
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Now, are there some challenges that providers and consumers face because of the Open Banking initiatives?
First, Open Banking APIs must be standardized to allow the greatest interactions between banks and Third Party Providers. Even if standardization initiatives have emerged (NextGenPSD2, Open Banking UK etc.), there is a risk of fragmentation of APIs.

There is also a challenge regarding liability relying on the handling of such huge volumes of data. The breadth and complexity in the open banking system involves many different interconnected players. Yet, the more players are added, the more the risk that scams gain access to customers' financial data increases. Where does liability fall in case of a data breach?

Finally, we'd highlight security, which is close from liability. Data needs to be secured at every stage: from gathering, to storage, transit and usage.
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How does Open Banking better work with Blobr enforced?
Open banking will add substantial value to all players, but only if regulated properly.

How to do so in the API world? A tool such as Blobr can help ensure the max has been done. Below's an overview of how:

Blobr automatically ingests any REST API. In a few seconds, you are able to start packaging your APIs the right way. By creating API Products in a few clics, you can apply rate limits and quotas, customize endpoints, set query and path parameters. It is a declarative way to say what is included in the API. Therefore, any information not included cannot be transmitted. It is your insurance policy to transmit only the right data to the right person.
Blobr is the right choice to make sure to identify users and grant them proper permissions.
Blobr generates an API portal out of the API Products you define. On that portal, end developers will be able to access the API Products you granted access to, or - if you wish - they will be able to self register to the API Products of their choice. That way, API adoption is greatly increased. A spot-on documentation is provided, that is tailored to their specific use-cases.
Blobr grants access to features that make it easy to rapidly build an Open Banking implementation beyond PSD2. The platform is already in production for several Fintech companies sharing data with selected partners.