I'm taking a look at the world of payment APIs right now. As with all my other monitoring of the API space, I am only looking for the best approaches, by the most interesting companies in the space--I don't have time to track on everything,
I am looking to take a snapshot of the payment API space, understand who the key players are, and how they are delivering valuable payment API resources that developers are actually using. Last week I puled together 38 payment APIs that I'm watching, and this week I am spending some time going through their sites, looking for what I'd consider to be some of the common building blocks of payment APIs.
Currently I have 50 building blocks I found across these 38 payment providers:
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Merchant Account - Creation, management and integration with merchant accounts that are required to process credit cards. |
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Bank Account - Integration with existing bank accounts, for inclusion in payment workflows. |
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Processor / Gateways - Access to multiple payment processors and gateways in multiple countries. |
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Currencies - Ability to conduct transactions in multiple currencies. |
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Credit Card Transactions - The option to process major credit cards. |
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ACH Transactions - The option to process transactions over the ACH network. |
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Checks / Wire Transactions - The option to do bank to bank, wire and check transactions. |
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Cash Transactions - The option to process major credit cards. |
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Virtual Transactions - The option to accept transactions for credits via virtual accounts. |
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Aggregate Transactions - Tools for performing multiple transactions at once. |
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Credit Card Reader - A physical credit card reading device. |
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Credit Card Scan / Picture - A mobile phone scan or picture of a credit card. |
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One Click / One Touch / Instant Buy - The ability to enable single action transactions. |
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Recurring Payments - The ability to perform recurring or subscription based transactions. |
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Prepayments - The ability to setup payment(s) prior to designated payment date. |
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Metered Payments - Payments based upon some metered usage of a resource. |
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Estimates - Estimations of payments, with payment handling at designated time. |
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Invoices - Physical or online invoicing of customers as request for payment. |
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Mobile Billing - The ability to perform transaction against mobile users monthly phone bill. |
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Social Payments - An option for making and accepting payments via social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. |
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Email Payments - Tools for sending and receiving transactions via email. |
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SMS Payments - Tools for sending and receiving transactions via SMS. |
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Carts - Ready to go online shopping cart solutions to support payment services. |
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Checkout - Ready to go checkout pages, to support payment services. |
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Forms - Embeddable HTML and JavaScript based forms to conduct transactions. |
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Buttons - Embeddable HTML and JavaScript buttons to initiate transactions. |
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Marketplace - The ability to facilitate marketplace style transactions between sellers and vendors. |
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Fraud Protection - Tools and services that assist developers in preventing payment fraud. |
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PCI Compliance - Tools and services that help developers achieve PCI compliance. |
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Encryption - Providing necessary encryption tools and services to protect communications. |
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Sandbox - A safe environment for developers to develop applications against, ensuring quality of service in production environments. |
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Webhooks - Registering of developer provider URLs for making HTTP calls when specific events occur. |
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Push Notifications - A push notification framework for developers to use when delivering push features in their applications. |
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Bar-codes - The ability to generate bar-codes that represent potential physical or virtual transactions. |
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Products - Separate systems for managing products that transactions will be part of. |
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Orders - Separate systems for managing orders in which transactions will be part of. |
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Customers - Separate systems for managing customers who perform transactions. |
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Coupons - Separate systems for coupons which can be applied against transactions |
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Loyalty - Separate systems for managing customer loyalty programs. |
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Expenses - Separate systems or managing expenses that involve transactions. |
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Time Tracking - Separate systems for tracking time associated with transactions. |
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Cards - The ability to issue physical or virtual gift, membership and other types of cards. |
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JS Libraries - Supporting JavaScript libraries that provide embeddable integration with payment services. |
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Mobile SDKs - Supporting mobile SDKs for iOS, Android, Windows and others, to facilitate mobile payments. |
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On-Premise - The ability to deploy payment services on-premise, keeping transactions secured locally. |
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Cloud - The ability to deploy payment services in the clouds, with centralized security. |
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3rd Party Shopping Carts - Integration options for popular 3rd party shopping carts. |
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Platform as a Service (PaaS) Integration - Integration with popular PaaS platforms like SalesForce and Google Apps. |
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Frameworks - Integration with popular programming frameworks like Backbone and Angular. |
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Automation - Integration with leading API automation platforms like Zapier and IFTTT. |
As with all of my research, this is ongoing. My hopes is to better educate myself (and you too), about the payment API sector, which I consider a pretty critical aspect of the overall API economy.
If there are any building blocks that you think should be included in my research, let me know at @kinlane, and I'll see about including.
