API-first at Adyen

APIs have been playing a critical role in the expansion of the Fintech landscape, especially with Open Banking regulations changing the way businesses and consumers interact with financial data. The new workflows require open but secure systems that can provide a new range of services and products, accessible in a standard, modular and consistent way.

At Adyen the journey started several years ago and it has been going through various phases and iterations, geared around the opportunities and challenges of the payment world (take a look at Becoming API-First in the Payment Industry on YouTube), and resulting in different layers (internal and external) and families (payments, banking, platform) of REST APIs sitting on top of a large dynamic platform.

The outcome is a company-wide culture where APIs are products, teams are the owners and everyone plays a part in shaping the API strategy.

In this article..

...we will look at what API-first means at Adyen, the API capabilities and strategy, and why we have adopted the OpenAPI specification.