SEED emerged from stealth mode to launch a revolutionary business banking API. According to SEED, businesses have asked for a banking API, which prompted its API-first approach.
SEED emerged from stealth mode Tuesday to launch a revolutionary business banking API. While Web and mobile apps remain on SEED's road map, SEED's value largely depends on interaction with the developer community; thus, SEED made its first public move with an API-first strategy. SEED believes that traditional banks overcharge and are overly complex. With the goal of automating banking for business owners, SEED looks to disrupt what is perhaps the most powerful industry on the planet.
"There's an enormous amount of demand for API banking. We've had many, many, many customer conversations, and people have been begging for it. The industry has been begging for it for a while," SEED co-founder and CEO Brian Merritt told TechCrunch. "We felt that releasing the API as soon as possible would allow [customers] to start working with it and allow us to improve it and make sure we're serving customers the best way possible."
SEED brings together the various benefits from online banks, online banking from traditional banks and business banks into a single platform. SEED's focus is ease of business so business owners can concentrate on running their companies, not keeping up with bank accounts. SEED believes its design, technology and service will save time and money so business owners can serve their own customers. As opposed to a transaction-based fee structure, SEED has adopted a software-as-a-service model where most fees are fixed, which gives business owners more certainty in banking costs.
The SEED API provides endpoints to create and maintain customer accounts, individual user credentials, transaction history, transfers and notification settings. Members represent business accounts, while individuals represent human accounts. These two simple concepts make up the basis that drives API configuration and settings. To learn more, visit the API docs or apply for membership.
Banking is ripe for disruption. Legacy banks continue to face scrutiny from governments, businesses and individual consumers alike. Whether the issue includes unwarranted risk, fees or data protection, the traditional bank has come under significant heat in recent years. Startups like SEED could be the answer businesses and consumers have sought.