Sila, an API platform that provides payments infrastructure as a service, has raised $13 million in Series A funding in a space that has been raining investments over the last few months.
We have been seeing that many platforms are being developed to bring payments across regions and banks under a single umbrella. As the world begins to shrink and people find it difficult to go to bank branches and banks also find it difficult to maintain branches and staff, we are looking towards a system where banks will be brought under a digital umbrella so that it presents a win-win situation for all.
While some banks have their own APIs, some others rely on third-party APIs while still many banks do not have any APIs for their systems and they still have to deal with legacy systems. The development of APIs that can cover such banks would avoid the need for businesses and the bank itself to deal with cumbersome legacy systems which would save a lot of costs. That is why we are seeing many of the new fintech companies focussing on building APIs that would integrate as many banks as possible and provide an easy backend interface for businesses and other firms to integrate into.
“Sila’s mission has always been to make money programmable. Access to the US banking system, especially for innovators and entrepreneurs, is extremely complex and prohibitive. The Sila Money API platform provides easy, scalable, and compliant money storage and money transfer.”, said Karkal, co-founder of Sila.
The company says that it already has 100s of clients with more signing up regularly and the company is hopeful of achieving record transaction volumes this year. With the new funding, the company would be looking to hire more resources and also plans for expansion and growth.
The digitalization of the banks is going to be a key aspect as we move forward in the banking sector and the fintech startups would help the banks to get there. The banks in different regions are in danger of losing out their business and relevance to the newer technology that has been coming up and it is up to to the banks to realize the risk that they are facing and make sure that they run with the times to keep up the pace.
