United States API Banking Market Assessment, By Component, By Deployment Mode, By Application, By End-user, By Region, Opportunities and Forecast, 2018-2032F

United States API Banking market is projected to witness a CAGR of 12.85% during the forecast period 2025-2032, growing from USD 8.72 billion in 2024 to USD 22.94 billion in 2032F. The United States API banking market's development is a function of several factors that are converging, including both regulatory changes and consumer demand for instant digital services, but also an increasing willingness of traditional banks and fintech innovators to work together. Financial institutions across the U.S. are modernizing their legacy systems in response to increased competition. We are moving into cloud-native, API-first, and scalable real-time digital services. It is increasingly important to align this with the broader U.S. fintech agenda to promote open banking and foster seamless data portability and embedded finance, thereby unlocking new revenue opportunities.

The United States banking API market is undergoing rapid transformation due to large-scale cloud migration, shifting digital customer expectations, and new and soon-to-be-regulated open finance developments.

A leading example is the Citizens banking API platform, launched in March 2025, which not only improves the bank's API readiness but also provides a quicker time-to-market for new product and service offerings as well as enhanced real-time personalization across every customer channel. Both banks are focusing on replacing their legacy infrastructure with API-enabled architecture for their respective core banking deliveries, as they both requested industry support for this change in their operational capabilities to better integrate with fintech in offering instant payments, customer-centric onboarding, and modular banking-as-a-service (BaaS) models.

These changes signify a larger shift in industry, where traditional banks are operating in a more tech-forward financial ecosystem by adopting interoperability and embedded finance improvements. With core banking owners moving to the cloud-based, APIs can enable third-party developers to create innovative customer experiences while also providing the necessary data security and scalability. The market will adopt a more modern state at a faster pace than initially anticipated in 2025, as more regional and mid-tier banks abandon static monolithic systems and move to an agile ecosystem model, both as banks and as consumers requiring interoperability. The long-term impact is a new U.S. banking model based not only on digital openness and speed, but also on the integration of ecosystems and their interactions.

Regulatory Push for Open Banking is Growing the Market

The single most significant regulatory influence in the U.S. API banking space is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's (CFPB) proposed open banking regulation, which will fundamentally change the way financial data is shared and managed. Under the new rule, financial institutions as well as aggregators must support secure, consumer-permissioned data transfers using APIs. Covered entities must provide access to personal financial data to third-party data providers in standardized formats. This regulation marks a shift away from screen scraping and credential sharing, toward direct access to data via APIs, promoting transparency, interoperability, and consumer empowerment.

This strategic shift has pushed United States banks to invest in and strengthen their API infrastructures that can comply with regulations, protect consumer data, and deliver exceptional user experiences.

For instance, data aggregators such as Plaid, Truist Bank, and Capital One DevExchange are working to align their data-sharing models with the introduction of the new federal regulations. The regulation is intended to ensure competition by forcing larger banks to open their platforms to smaller fintech companies. This transition has created strong demand for secure API management platforms and increased collaboration between incumbent banks and technology providers. The forthcoming CFPB regulation will ultimately be a lightning rod for institutional adoption of APIs and data democratization in U.S. financial services.

Monetization of Customer Data Access

A second significant opportunity within the U.S. API banking market is that large banks are now moving towards monetization of fintech's access to customer data.

For instance, in July 2025, JPMorgan Chase announced a move towards charging fintech to help them leverage its customer data via APIs. As such, it marks a shift in dynamics between traditional banks and third-party aggregators, reflects the value banks put on API infrastructure and secure exchanges of data, and is in direct contrast to the way fintech had been leveraging APIs for years without financial ramifications, or at worst, indirect means such as scraping data. Specifically, JPMorgan is moving from a zero model to a new monetization model within API ecosystems.

This could lead to higher fees for other large banks, such as Wells Fargo, Gateway, and BBVA USA, if they pursue similar revenue opportunities, and force fintech to evaluate their cost structures and strengthen integrations. Indeed, this should create awareness for API governance, access management, and data ownership. These banks charge fintech directly and may push aggregators to consolidate data relationships, as well as spur innovation in open data standardization. Over time, we may also see different tiers of API depending on the depth of data, latency, or functionality, turning API banking in the U.S. into a systematic fee model or service model.

Cloud-Based Platforms Dominating the United States API Banking Market

Cloud-based deployment is rapidly gaining traction in the United States API banking industry, providing banks and fintechs access to greater scalability, agility, and lower operational costs. Financial institutions are adopting cloud-native platforms for payment processing, KYC, and account management via APIs. The transition is evidenced by fintech platform Mercury's fundamental rethinking of its core relationships with its partner bank, Evolve Bank & Trust, in March 2025. Much is evolving in this successful movement. Not long ago, the KYC procedure with Molly.ai successfully managed account holder relationship operations, including connectivity events through the API stack and support infrastructure, as well as KYC compliance posture. These transitions can often equate to "back of the bus" restructuring for better-performing, modular, and cloud-based systems that are service-oriented, real-time and accessed via APIs.

The Platform component, however, continues to occupy a leading market share because banks and fintechs leverage full-on API management suites that help with integration, versioning, and security. The examples of identity verification, transaction aggregation, and BaaS delivery use cases can all originate from flexible, API-centric cloud environments. The Adoption of cloud vs. on-premises solutions is exceptionally robust among challenger banks, neobanks, and third-party service providers seeking to achieve go-to-market execution speed in the cloud. The cloud model also has surmountable interoperability considerations that can ease the way with third-party payment rails, i.e., FedNow and RTP.

Key Players Landscape and Outlook

The United States API banking space is driven by banking incumbents and fintech API companies, including Plaid Inc., Stripe, Truist Bank, ClearBank Ltd., and Synctera, which are seeking to drive the growth of the ecosystem. A recent example is Plaid, which has expanded its Embedded Finance and Open Finance API portfolio by enabling developers to integrate with financial accounts, access real-time balances, facilitate payments, and verify identities through standardized APIs. Plaid's numerous APIs are aligned with open banking trends and are accessible across thousands of apps and services in the U.S.

At the same time, Stripe is extending to embedded banking services for platforms and marketplaces. Meanwhile, Unit Finance Inc. and Synctera are enabling BaaS (Banking as a Service) for non-bank businesses, utilizing APIs to create an ecosystem of financial infrastructure enablers that connect customer-facing apps to regulated banking infrastructure. As traditional banks and API fintechs become increasingly interdependent, a competitive ecosystem is emerging, and leadership will be defined by scalability, security, and developer experience. Although regulation is just emerging and embedded finance is just beginning to be adopted, these companies will play a crucial role in defining the future of API banking in the U.S.