Wells Fargo issued the following announcement on Feb. 11.
Wells Fargo announced today that Wells Fargo Gateway, a market-leading application programming interface (API) channel, processed more than 1.5 billion digital interactions in 2019. The interactions, also known as API calls, are initiated when a consumer or business makes a data or transaction request of Wells Fargo through the bank’s API channel.
“The volume of API calls last year demonstrates the growing importance customers place on having options to use our products and services in their digital context,” said Imran Haider, head of open APIs for Wells Fargo. “In building our Wells Fargo Gateway platform, we took an early lead in offering APIs because we saw an opportunity to bring the bank to our customers, more securely embedding Wells Fargo features and functions into a variety of digital platforms outside the bank. The use of APIs represents the future of distribution, simplifying banking for our customers as they seek digital experiences that help their day-to-day financial lives.”
Established in 2016, Wells Fargo Gateway serves as an enterprise API channel across the company’s business lines and features use cases supporting faster payments and data services. The technology allows wholesale banking customers to integrate Wells Fargo products, services and information into their own digital environments, such as treasury workstations or enterprise resource planning software. It also allows Wells Fargo retail and business customers to more securely share their financial data with third-party digital applications while maintaining the privacy of their user credentials and allowing them to discontinue sharing at their discretion.
A majority of the 1.5 billion API call volume was generated by consumer and small business customers requesting to share their financial data with third-party financial apps and data aggregators with which the bank has data exchange agreements. Since 2016, Wells Fargo has entered into 15 data sharing agreements with third parties including Intuit (covering Mint, QuickBooks Online, and TurboTax), Plaid and Xero. As API integrations with third parties are completed, Wells Fargo customers also will be able to see and control their data sharing from within the company’s proprietary Control TowerSM digital experience, available in the Wells Fargo Mobile® app and Wells Fargo Online.
“API-based data sharing enabled by Wells Fargo Gateway offers our retail customers the ability to conveniently and more securely share their Wells Fargo financial information with third-party apps and services that help them to better manage their financial lives,” said Ben Soccorsy, head of digital payments for Wells Fargo Virtual Channels. “A good example of this is with Control Tower, our digital experience that allows customers to see where they’re sharing their financial data and giving them the ability to control it at the account level. Reaching this API call milestone is a powerful testament to the value API-based data sharing brings to our customers.”
Original source can be found here.