Online shopping: APIs ensure security and ease of e-commerce payments

From real-time bank reconciliations to automated reporting, APIs are a powerful ally for businesses of all sizes. These technological tools bridge the gap between different systems and software, enabling automation and efficient data exchange, providing greater financial visibility, quality, and efficiency to internal operations.

In retail, consumers use multiple payment methods, from cards to bank transfers, and payment gateway APIs simplify this reconciliation and allow a store to offer such a wide variety of payment options at checkout. With their help, the finance department can automatically monitor payment status and identify any discrepancies between sales made and amounts received.

"For retail companies, the main advantages include operational efficiency, time savings, data centralization, and agile decision-making. But one of the biggest attractions of APIs is their ability to automate repetitive and time-consuming processes, such as bank reconciliation. By connecting stores' financial systems to banks' platforms, they allow transactions—such as transfers, supplier payments, and balance monitoring—to occur and be recorded automatically," says Ticiana Amorim, CEO and founder of Aarin, the first tech-finance hub specialized in Pix and Embedded Finance in Brazil.

This not only streamlines financial control but also reduces the risk of fraud by enabling more rigorous analysis of payment data. For companies, this security is essential in a scenario where transaction volumes grow every day.

Ticiana also states that companies using digital accounting systems can use APIs to automatically integrate accounting entries, organizing revenues and expenses and reducing the time spent on manual records. "It's like having a live cash control panel. The ability to constantly update and check the balance is a differentiator that helps identify where adjustments are needed," Ticana emphasizes.

The acronym API comes from Application Programming Interfaces (or application programming interfaces, in Portuguese), and Brazil is the fourth country that creates the most APIs in the world. In 2023 alone, there were 5.45 million such programs in Brazil, according to the report. State of the API 2023, conducted by Postman. "With the growth of API development, the future of retail is shaping up to be increasingly connected, efficient, and dynamic," concludes Ticiana.