The Ledger

A. P. Why? What lenders need to know about API’s 

• Dancerace

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Dancerace’s Jon Watts briefs Georgiana Campbell on what lenders need to know about API’s, and how to get the most from the Dancerace API. 

This episode is perfect for lenders who keep hearing the term API and want to know what it means for their business. It's also ideal for Dancerace customers who are thinking about building bespoke functionality or integrating a system into the Dancerace platform using our API.  

This podcast is not a technical deep-dive into our API. It's a conceptual overview. If you're a CTO or a CIO, please speak to us directly about our API. 

Chapters 

  • 01:07: What is an API? 
  • 02:32: What makes API’s relevant for invoice finance lenders? 
  • 04:43: Why does Dancerace offer an API? 
  • 08:35: What type of data can lenders access with our API?   
  • 09:00: How are lenders using the Dancerace API? 

Georgiana Campbell, Dancerace Marketing Manager:  What is an API? 

Jon Watts, Head of Product:  API means ‘Application programming Interface’. Put simply, it’s a type of software technology that allows one software system to speak to another. API’s allow systems to share data or trigger activities in another. 

A good example of an API technology – and quite a complex one – we use today is Open Accounting. 

Open Accounting uses an API to connect our lending platform to borrowers’ accounting packages via a third party, Codat. We exchange financial information between those systems via the API. The data is extracted, the changes in client's accounting systems trigger changes in the lender's connected systems and these flow through into our e3 Client Access and c3 Backoffice Control systems, to inform our lenders’ decisions. 

It's important to point out that APIs aren't a new technology and are very secure. They've been around for decades, but the rise of technologies like Open Accounting, Open Banking and the trend for software integration has prompted us to open our systems via API’s, for lenders. They're much more prevalent now than they were ten years ago. 

GC:  Can you tell us why API’s are relevant for invoice finance lenders? 

JW: The main reason is probably cost. API’s allow you to do more with your existing lending systems. You can use them to work more efficiently by automating data transfer from one system to another, or by making sure that data is kept consistent and up-to-date between different systems. 

A good example of this is Open Banking, where you can use your client's bank feed to keep your record of payments and collections up to date in your backoffice system. System API’s also allow you to differentiate your product offering or even offer unique borrower experiences. You could save prospects from having to upload their ledgers during onboarding by extracting the data straight from their accounts package, or you could offer bad debt protection limits or credit limits to clients for individual invoices instantly.  

API’s can also be used for reporting or business intelligence, allowing lenders to extract data from core systems such as the Dancerace product suite, to combine it with data from other systems – for example, CRM platforms – for company-wide reporting. 

Using an API also ensures consistency of data across different systems. A single system like a CRM platform can be used as the single source of truth, and API’s can be used to update client information into the Dancerace system. Changes made in Dancerace systems can be synchronized with CRM’s and vice-versa, giving clients the ability to update data in multiple locations, safe in the knowledge that they're not causing duplication or conflict. 

Lenders can use API’s to integrate software systems to do all sorts of things more efficiently and effectively, from managing their risk to generating reports or processing collections. The options are almost endless. Many of our lenders’ day-to-day headaches can be solved in part or in whole by using the data in their software systems. API’s unlock the value of this data.  

GC:  What do our listeners need to know about the Dancerace API?  

‘API’ is a broad term and we use several different API’s in our platform to integrate with different external systems. For example, our Open Accounting API, which is powered by Codat. 

 For this podcast, I'm talking about our open API which we offer to lenders. They can use that to connect their choice of systems. 

We originally launched our API in response to lenders’ requests for access to their data stored in Dancerace systems. Since then, we've been continuously updating the number of fields and data points accessible via the API at the request of our lenders. We've subsequently focused our own application design on working with our API’s. Dancerace lenders come to us with an idea of what they want to do with their data or systems, and we open up the right part of our platform for them. 

That could mean c3, our back-office system; f3, our onboarding system; Insights; or r3, our risk system. For example, a lender might want to synchronize client data with their CRM package so that they only need to update it in one place, or they may want to integrate an identity management system so they can control their user security and permissions from a single remote location. 

Lenders could also choose to integrate with third-party systems to manage credit limits or exchange rates in one place, and then copy that information into our c3 Backoffice Control system.    

As we've expanded and extended our API over the years, we’ve also evolved our own internal product development processes to utilize the Dancerace API. In the future, all Dancerace products will use the Dancerace API, to give them the same access to data as we provide to lenders via our API.  

We intend to open up our platforms and make our data fully accessible to lenders and third parties to develop their own solutions, on top of the data we store and process. 

GC:  Why do we offer an API? 

JW:  The simple answer is that we offer an API to allow our lenders to get more value from their Dancerace platform. Our API also serves a higher goal for Dancerace. As a company, we're on a mission to build the complete, connected invoice finance operating system. We see our lending platform as the hub where lending teams do the bulk of their everyday work, like managing their portfolio, analysing risk, and processing payments. Over the next few years, we'll use API connectivity to integrate new services into our platform and to continually expand the types of work that users can do. 

Over the last five years, we've integrated Codat’s Open Accounting technology and connections with bad debt providers, and now we're working on Open Banking.  In time, we envision our lenders integrating a wide range of systems into our platform using API’s. This includes CRMs, banking platforms for collections or payments, customer portals, data warehousing and business information systems, credit control systems, insurance providers – even other lending platforms.  

GC:  What type of data can lender access with our API? 

JW:  Right now, lenders can use our API to access hundreds of data points from within our platform, and that list is growing constantly. It includes data on clients, customers, and all of the related financial information. Most of our onboarding workflow data is also accessible via the API.  

GC: Can you give an example of how our lenders are using our API today?  

JW:  We've done some work recently with a customer who have placed API’s at the heart of their invoice financing offering. They've integrated with Open Accounting and integrated a variety of other third-party systems via API’s. The overall solution they're offering to the market includes data that's extracted directly from clients’ accounting packages, synchronised through API’s into Dancerace systems. Borrowers subsequently request payment, and funds are advanced in part through API transactions. Collections are paid directly to borrowers’ bank accounts, and these are synchronised directly with our c3 backoffice system via API. 

This effectively creates a fully automated invoice finance solution with API connections between accounting packages, core processing systems and bank accounts. To go one step further, the lender has also integrated their security platform via an API. Using our SSO technology, security and permissions management is done via an API into a third-party system. 

This project is with a customer in the Asia-Pacific region, but we think this could be the future direction of Open Banking integrations in the UK as well. 


If you're a Dancerace customer and would like to explore our API offering, please speak to your customer success manager. If you're not a Dancerace customer, please contact us at info@dancerace.com.