The key to any transaction whether in the online or physical world is the payment process. Payment is a common feature across desktop, web and mobile applications. PayPal is often the first choice that springs up on developers when they think of integrating payment into their applications. Developers want an easy to use API, sandbox testing, fair transaction fees and definitely less paperwork and wait time. Stripe aims to simplify the process of accepting payments on the Web with its easy-to-use Stripe API.
Payment is a critical piece of any application and new usage patterns have indicated that users are likely to do their purchase from a variety of devices and applications. It is important to create the right experience within the application so that the payment process is seamless to the user. Visa, one of the key players in the payment industry, has announced the launch of its developer program to consolidate all its offerings and push its new digital wallet service, V.me, that is slated to launch in early 2012. The V.me by Visa API is available to developers now for beta testing.
If you have tried to search for currency exchange rate APIs, chances are that it has not been a smooth experience. While there are plenty of currency conversion websites, getting access to up-to date exchange rates to power your financial applications has usually gotten stalled due to high usage fees. Some services charge in the hundreds of dollars per year to get access to these rates. If CurrencyBot and the Open Source Exchange Rates API project has its way, this could be a problem of the past.
At TwilioCon in San Francisco today, Twilio is unveiling a new billing system for its API. This new in-app billing solution is called “Twilio Connect,” and it provides a much simpler model for developers to implement customer billing when it comes to recurring charges for SMS and phone calls.
Stock trading systems community Collective2 is bringing automated trading systems to the retail brokerage customer. Joe Shmoe can now have access to a trading system developed and practiced by an experienced broker, mad technical analyst, or possibly even a computer algorithm. The Collective2 API will make it possible for quant systems all over the internet to trigger trading in unknown numbers of retail customer accounts. Dangerous? Frightening? Futuristic? Yes, Indeed.
Jonathan Stark’s Starbucks card is seeing a lot of use this week. That’s because he’s sharing it with the whole Internet. Anonymous people are both using and adding money to the card and we can all follow the balance with the Jonathan’s Card API or over the tweets which come rolling in once per minute.
Google may not have landed Groupon in its quest for traction in daily deals. Instead, it acquired The Dealmap, an aggregator of local coupons. With the purchase by the search giant, we now list 89 Google APIs in our directory, with The Dealmap API now part of the Google arsenal.
Location data and storage company SimpleGeo has announced plans to change its pay-per-use pricing for the SimpleGeo API, removing a free option for low volume users. Instead, the company will offer tiered pricing, with 60 day free trials at every tier.
EVE Online, the internet spaceship game that puts all of it’s players into one virtual universe, recently announced plans to license and monetize its EVE Online API. The proposed license would allow developers to make money from apps using the API in return for an annual fee. The details of the new licensing program were released by game developer CCP shortly after it’s annual fanfest in Reykjavik, Iceland. EVE’s player community quickly attacked parts of the license, prompting CCP to suspend the changes until later this summer when some of the concerns can be addressed.
Waiters like to work in pricey restaurants serving wealthy patrons because they are able to pay for high class service. That’s also why you see so many professionals in the banking industry: it pays to work for people with money. Xignite took note of this and decided to become the Maitre’d of information to the financial industry. With more than 3.5 Billion calls per month to its Xignite APIs, it is doing a fine job of it, as well.
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