Who’s Moving Fast: Developer Relations Programs and the FinTech World

There has been a lot of exciting FinTech developer relations news in the past couple of weeks. Stories have included developer news about integrations with documents, payment processing, mobile payments and more. These are exciting times for developers and developer relations programs. Some of the announcements are related to new features that consumers and businesses use. I’m sure developers will soon see new or enhanced APIs that we can use in our apps. When I’ve looked at what some financial companies have done to reach out to developers, I’ve noticed that many of them will only work with a select few companies. There is an ocean of developers out there who are building cool apps that could (and want to) leverage additional financial APIs. For those of you who have developer relations programs that are looking to connect with the FinTech world, you only have to see how your APIs and programs can integrate with other programs.

Developer Relations Programs and the FinTech World

Developers are at the center of a wide range of innovations that are changing the way applications interact with financial systems. Here are just a few of the many recent announcements about new capabilities for consumers, businesses, developers, startups, and individuals. The opening up of financial APIs, the growing use of smartphones, wearables, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, analytics, and frameworks is allowing more devices, platforms, services and users to participate in the next generation of transactions. What more will developers be able to build into their applications? What innovations will be integrated into every developer relations program and API? In looking at recent FinTech news, Mastercard, Docusign, Google, Microsoft, Paypal and Samsung are moving forward fast!

• Mastercard Enables Microsoft Wallet, Android Pay and Samsung Pay Users to Shop Online Wherever Masterpass is Accepted
• Introducing DocuSign Payments: The New Way to Sign and Pay
• Visa Developer Insights: Mountain America Credit Union uses Kickstart Workshop (video)
• PayPal inks partnerships with Visa, MasterCard
• Introducing Square’s Virtual Terminal: Accept Payments on Your Computer
• 9 ways tech addiction will compromise your private life
• MasterCard wants to bring the technology behind Apple Pay to more wearables
• Android Pay partners with Visa and Mastercard to bring simple checkout to more places online
• Mastercard Developers – using Masterpass payment processing in an AR/VR environment – Unity reference app

Platforms, Cloud, Mobile, IoT, Big Data and FinTech all come together

When you look at the recent developer and financial announcements and innovations, you see the coming together of platforms, cloud, mobile, IoT, Big Data and FinTech. Developers are integrating many different APIs and services to build the applications of today and tomorrow. Knowing what developers require to bring it all together, take a 360 degree knowledge of what developers need and want. Knowing what your developer relations program must deliver that shows developers how to fit it all together, is key to your and their success. Most developer programs only focus on their own APIs and SDKs. This means that developers have to go join multiple developer programs, read the documents, watch the tutorials and then weave the code snippets and APIs into solutions. When more developer relations programs come together and provide integrated tutorials and demos across the FinTech spectrum, then we’ll see the next growth spurt in app and payment innovation.

Evans Data Corporation was created to fill the demand for market research, market intelligence, and strategic planning in the software development industry. Since then we have become the industry leader in market intelligence focused on all areas of development from software to hardware to mobility.

FinTech related Developer Programs

Here are links to the developer programs mentioned in the news articles and this blog post.

• Mastercard developers
• Visa developer center
• PayPal Developer
• DocuSign Developer Center
• Android Pay (Google Developers)
• Apple Pay (Apple Developers)
• Square Developer Program
• Samsung Developers

Does your Developer Relations program integrate with Financial Services developer programs?

This week, the Money 20/20 conference is taking place in Las Vegas. I’ll bet that we will see more developer news appearing throughout the week (not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas). FinTech companies better more at warp speed: John Sculley, ex-CEO of Apple, warns “Financial Firms that they’re in a Sprint for their Lives“. John said “plan for radical change, or prepare for obsolescence”. “If you think in the fintech world that you can live in linear times,” Sculley said, “it ain’t going to turn out that way.”

I will keep everyone posted as new FinTech APIs and developer relations offerings start appearing. If your developer relations program has or is adding financial services APIs or integrating our developer outreach program with other financial program APIs, send me an email.

David Intersimone “David I” VP of Developer Communities davidi@evansdata.com