Interswitch, a Nigerian integrated digital payments and commerce platform has announced that it has integrated all its API products in one platform with an aim to give its customers access to the company’s products with little or no customer support.
The move will help developers and businesses maximise the array of benefits its several API products have to offer without friction.
Abdul-Hafiz Ibrahim, the company’s head of engineering for payment services said “Before now, developers had to contact us whenever they needed to integrate without an API, you can now go on the platform to call whatever API you need without necessarily having to call anyone at Interswitch for support.”
According to Muyiwa Asagba, divisional CEO of Interswitch’s Paymate,Interswitch is one of the first set of financial technology companies in Nigeria that handled remittance and it focused on building the foundational infrastructure other fintech companies have leveraged over the years. As a result the company now has over 20 APIs with millions of calls across these APIs.
Four of the company’s APIs have been spearheading financial revolution in Africa, especially in Nigeria, for instance Paycode API, which powers cardless transactions, continues to change the way people and businesses interact with remittances. Without a card or cheque, customers are able to withdraw cash by generating a 10–14-digit code on their bank mobile app. They can then go to the ATM to perform a cardless transaction using the digits. According to Ibrahim, this solves the problem of a lack of ATM cards and is useful in emergencies when a person’s card is misplaced or unavailable.
There is also the value-added services API, that enables businesses to automate bills payment and airtime recharge to their customers.
The lending services API enables lenders to automate their credit scoring system, conveniently disburse and collect loans, and access customer transaction history.
Then the Accept payment” API helps businesses receive payments online, in-app, in person using its POS SDK, or by building their own payment experiences using its various APIs.
“We have always had API,” Asagba said. “We’ve been building APIs since 2004, but now, there’s a need to build efficiency and make interaction with our APIs seamless. We have simplified the documentation. We have also built a community around them.”
Besides the developers’ console where developers can search or find and choose a particular API they need, there’s also a developer community, a Slack community built to connect engineers to share knowledge, problems, and solutions. The community already has over 800 members. The company has now built a referral network that rewards developers who refer merchants to use its APIs.
While speaking at the event, Sunday Olaniyan, the company’s business development manager for merchant acquisition, referred to the development as a way to identify with and give back to the developers who have supported and contributed to the company’s growth. “Developers will earn 5% on every transaction cost Interswitch makes on their referred merchants for 5 years. This, and many more to come, is how we are giving back to the developer community,” he said.