Building sales and product ecosystems with Apiture

What

Apiture is a North Carolina-based digital banking platform serving more than 300 credit unions and banks in the US. Founded in 2017, Apiture raised $29 million in Q2 2022; two-thirds of the round’s investment came from existing Apiture customers, including Live Oak Bank, Pinnacle Bank, and BHG Financial. Through its banking API marketplace, Apiture offers an inventory of widgets that banking customers can use to tailor their digital platforms, gaining access to over 200 fintech partners. 

Why

According to Matt Ellis, Chief Revenue Officer at Apiture, the company saw a major increase in demand from banks during the opening months of the pandemic. Banks faced a sudden need for mobile check deposit capabilities. “Imagine older folks who are accustomed to going into the branch to deposit three or four checks at once,” Ellis said. “With branches closed or with limited hours, they needed to find different ways.” Banks also moved toward digital account opening capabilities, which, for many banks and credit unions, was still only possible in person at a branch. Adding digital account opening capabilities—in addition to other innovative products and services—let these banking customers find and retain entirety new batches of clients. 

How

To Ellis, the core of Apiture’s success can be attributed to discipline across product development, customer retention, partnership management, and sales teams. For the sales team, this means exclusively focusing on banks and credit unions that are the right size and have their needs met by Apiture’s suite of products. This sometimes means saying no when a potential client requires a niche add-on product to meet a specific use case that other Apiture customers wouldn’t benefit from. 

As an alternative, Ellis brokers meetings between potential banking API marketplace partners and banking clients. If banking clients are interested in the potential product, then Apiture proceeds with a partnership with that fintech. A “no” from banking clients, Ellis says, is helpful to the fintech, and helps them refine their sales and product strategies for future pitches. 

“The reason they're there is because our customers use them,” Ellis said in reference to the fintech partners it has on its API bank platform. “They're in there because we know there are banks or credit unions that get value from their service.”

Apiture reserves a proportion of its annual capacity to CDRs, or client development requests, which lets Apiture quickly build out product features that would be useful to its range of customers. In partnership with Alabama Credit Union and SavvyMoney, for example, Apiture was able to launch a credit score embedding and behavior modeling tool within four months. It’s now sold that product to more than 100 banks. 

“We have no intention of trying to build everything, but what we're really good at is identifying new things that have a need in our market, integrating with them, and delivering them into our banks,” Ellis said. “And that keeps our existing customers happy, and it makes sure that our product stays fresh and competitive in the market.”