How APIs and Developer Portals Are Powering Banking-as-a-Service

Author: Bruce Tompkins, Director, Product Manager, Banking-as-a-Service

In today’s rapidly digitizing financial landscape, customers expect more than just traditional banking — they expect seamless, embedded financial experiences across the platforms they already use. Enter Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), a transformative model that enables non-bank companies to offer financial services by leveraging the infrastructure and licenses of regulated banks. At the heart of this transformation are APIs, and, equally important, the developer portals that empower partners to use them.

We’re excited to announce the launch of the FNBO Developer Circle — a robust and accessible API developer portal built to power the next wave of fintech innovation. Whether you're a fintech startup, retailer or enterprise platform, Developer Circle is your gateway to unlocking FNBO’s trusted financial capabilities and embedding them directly into your customer experiences.

APIs: The Backbone of Banking-as-a-Service

APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are the building blocks of BaaS. They provide standardized, secure access to a bank’s core services, such as payments, account and transaction data, card issuing and more. Instead of building costly, regulated infrastructure from scratch, companies can connect to these APIs and rapidly bring financial products to market.

This decoupling of the front-end customer experience from the back-end banking infrastructure opens up new business models. With APIs, banks become platforms offering financial capabilities that others can build on.

Banking-as-a-Service Use Cases

BaaS is already reshaping industries and redefining how financial services are delivered. Here are just a few real-world examples of how APIs and BaaS are being used today:

• Open Banking: Customers expect access to their balances and transactions in the Personal Financial Management (PFM) or accounting system of their choice in order to budget, forecast and reconcile. Open Banking APIs enable this capability.
• Embedded Banking: Embedded banking integrates financial services — like payments, lending or accounts — directly into non-bank platforms or apps, enabling users to access banking features within the context of everyday digital experiences without visiting a traditional bank.
• Payments-as-a-Service (PaaS): Payments-as-a-Service (PaaS) provides businesses with ready-to-use, API-driven infrastructure to accept, process and manage payments without building their own systems, enabling fast, secure and scalable transactions across digital channels.

All of these innovations are possible because of the infrastructure provided by banks through secure APIs — and the developer portals that simplify access.

Why a Developer Portal Matters

Even the most powerful APIs are only as useful as they are accessible. That’s where the FNBO Developer Circle comes in.

With FNBO Developer Circle, we’re providing a centralized hub where developers, product teams and partners can:

• Discover available APIs for account services, payments, cards and more.
• Test endpoints directly in our interactive sandbox environment.
• Access documentation, and guides that reduce time-to-integration.
• Get support from our dedicated API and advisory teams.

Our portal is designed not just for developers, but for innovators — those building the next generation of financial experiences.

Why Choose FNBO for Your BaaS Journey?

As one of the largest privately held banks in the U.S. with over 167 years of experience, FNBO brings stability, compliance expertise and a proven track record in delivering fintech partnerships. We understand what it takes to scale embedded financial services, and we’ve built FNBO Developer Circle to help you do just that.

Whether you're looking to launch a new fintech app, embed financial products into your platform or explore new revenue streams through financial innovation, FNBO is your partner in making it happen.

Contact our team to get started.

About the Author

Bruce evaluates and delivers on opportunities to best leverage FNBO’s investment in APIs, connecting the applications within our technology stack and with trusted partners. He works to ensure that APIs enable robust and reusable integrations so FNBO's capabilities are multiplied via a rich ecosystem, prioritizing the right mix of real-time capabilities for UI/UX and business processes.