VA Signs Contract with Google Cloud, Conduit Raises $17 Million, API-First Transformation at Scale

The API Changelog issue 2022.02

This is issue 2022.02 of the API Changelog, a weekly mix of API news, commentary, and opinion. In this issue, you'll get to know the most relevant API-related information from the week of January 10, 2022. Subscribe now, so you never miss an issue of the API Changelog.

Funding and M&A

Conduit, a DeFI API platform, raised $17M in a Seed round. Portage Ventures led the investment, with participation from Gemini Frontier Fund, Diagram Ventures, and Core Innovation Capital, among others.

Global Processing Services, a finance, and API payments platform, raised $100M in a private equity round. Temasek Holdings and MissionOG participated in the investment.

Jitterbit, an API transformation company, acquired PrimeApps, a low-code application development service. According to TechCrunch, "The PrimeApps brand is going away as part of this deal and the service will be fully merged into Jitterbit, with its customers moving to the new platform over time."

Announcements

Care Bridge International, a medical claim management company, announced the release of their API platform. According to the announcement, "The API pairs high-tech machine learning claim analytics with advanced clinical algorithms to automate medical claim reserves and Medicare Set Asides."

Traceable AI, an API security company, announced that they have obtained SOC 2 Type 2 compliance certification. According to Jyoti Bansal, Traceable CEO, they're "committed to providing data security, accessibility, and confidentiality to our customers, and this SOC 2 Type 2 certification is an important step in doing so."

The US Department of Veterans Affairs announced the signature of a $13M contract with Google Cloud. One of the goals of the deal is to improve VA's Lighthouse API program. According to Dave Mazik, VA Lighthouse Director, "Google Cloud's Apigee will help the VA to continue scaling the VA Lighthouse API program for third-party developers in a cost-efficient manner."

Fintech

Tom Sullivan wrote "What is a financial API integration and how does it work?" In the article, Tom explains what a financial API integration is. Additionally, he shows that you can create different types of integrations, such as account verification, balance, and transactions. The article ends with a step-by-step illustration of the things you need to create a financial service with API integrations.

Sahil Verma wrote "3D Secure 2.0: The Future of Digital Payment Security is Now." Sahil starts the article by explaining what 3D Secure is and what its benefits are. He then explores what are the future implications for e-commerce and how you can adopt the 3D Secure system.

Sahil Verma also wrote "Which Type of Payment Gateway is Right for Your Business?" In this article, Sahil goes through the different types of payment gateways and gives you a way to select the one that best fits your needs.

API-first

Jayadeba Jena wrote "A playbook for API-first transformation at scale-Summary, Organization challenges and Conclusion." This article is the last one in a series about API-first transformation at scale. Jayadeba touches on many topics in this piece, from DDD, to service development, governance, and business value of APIs.

Ashley Peacock wrote "A Simple Blueprint For Building Sustainable APIs." This article goes through the layers of a sustainable API architecture and showcases their benefits. The author then shares an example of a sustainable API architecture.

Management

Nataliia Kovalchuk wrote "5 Benefits of Using an API Integration Platform." Nataliia starts the article by explaining what an API integration platform is and how API integration works. She then shares the five benefits of using an API integration platform: abstraction, support, security, productivity, and economy.

Kirby Montgomery wrote "Product Manager Guide for Launching an API Offering Fast." In this piece, Kirby shares tools that will increase your productivity in four different areas: documentation, authentication, developer portal, and gateway.

Joanna Suau wrote "The design of API documentation." This article is an interview with Joanna where she approaches API documentation as something that is designed and not taken for granted. According to Joanna, "documentation is no longer considered just a reference of endpoints a developer can implement in their project. It is an advertisement for a technology that should be appealing to both developers and business decision-makers alike."

Practice

Jack Johnson wrote "Building simple REST APIs in AWS using Lambda and API Gateway." Jack shares a step-by-step guide on how to set up and document an API using AWS API Gateway and Lambda.

Ajay Kapoor wrote "API Development Best Practices to Follow in 2022." In this article, Ajay shares what he considers API development best practices. Some practices include reducing latency, making sure that the API is aligned with the needs of the consumers, scalability, security, and availability.

Cédric F wrote "Writing good APIs for Mobile Apps." The author goes through the characteristics of a good API and then digs into each one of the topics in detail. Cedric argues that a good API is a combination of many characteristics and should in all cases be built with the customer in mind.

Mike Mwanje wrote "How to run API automated tests with Newman on CircleCI." This article is a tutorial on how to configure CircleCI to run API automated tests with the help of Newman. Mike starts by going through what you need to set up the project. He then walks you through getting your Postman and environment ready and finally, how to connect Postman to CircleCI.

Security

Bruce Lynch wrote "How to Make API Security an Integral Part of Your Application Security Strategy." This article is an introduction to how API security can affect your overall application security.

Michal Trojanowski wrote "The Data Your Access Token Reveals and How to Secure It." In this article, Michal starts by exploring how your data can be exposed through JWT. He then explains how you can protect the information that is stored in tokens.

Ben Dickson reports that "IP spoofing bug leaves Django REST applications open to DDoS, password-cracking attacks." Ben shows how APIs built with Django can be exploited by spoofing the IP address.