API Case Study: Enterprise Integration of Credit Offers API

When Capital One's DevExchange's platform launched, CreditCards.com was among the first partners to integrate the Credit Offers API into their site. For CreditCards.com and their partner sites, a credit card is a tool to provide a person the means to do, get, and plan for what makes them happy. If someone loves to travel, the “right” credit card for them is one that helps them travel.

Many of Bankrate's - CreditCards.com's parent company - partner publications focus on helping their readers earn and redeem miles and hotel points and inspiring them to make the most out of their travel experiences. A few of their partners help with budgeting and saving to keep travel costs down. The Credit Offers API provides current information like product names, card images, categories, rewards, APRs, balance transfer rates and fees and annual fees so sites can help their customers find the right card for them.

An Enterprise Model

After seeing benefits of more accurate and up-to-date data with the Credit Offers API, the functionality was expanded to partner sites. Using the same integration that powers the experience on CreditCards.com, Bankrate has now expanded the reach of the Credit Offers API to their partners. All the sites can benefit from more accurate and current data to help their customers find the card that fits their needs. CreditCards.com developers, who build features for their site as well as other Bankrate partners, created a central repository where the data is downloaded on a consistent basis and then pushed out to the partner sites.

A Platform for Developers

The DevExchange was designed to give developers the tools they need to easily integrate APIs - a robust testing environment, great documentation that is comprehensive and simple, and sample code, reference applications and the support they need to do the work. During the integration of the Credit Offers API, these elements helped with the integration process for the Bankrate team. It was an easy process to register through the DevExchange platform and integrate the API into application. The time and effort spent to integrate the Credit Offers API into has helped us identify ways to improve the application and maximize uptime. - Josh M, Front-end Developer at CreditCards.com

Documentation Written for Developers

CreditCards.com Product Manager Ellen P. has worked on integrating several partners into the CreditCards.com experience and said that the API documentation on DevExchange stands out. "The documentation is excellent. The information was always up to date and really helped with the integration." DexExchange documentation is focused on the ways that language is understood by developers to describe what the API can do for them. Writers organize documentation around customer jobs — tasks, workflows, supporting reference apps, and tutorials.

Support for Scale

One of the main ways that DevExchange fosters a two-way conversation with developers and business is through the Professional Services team. Through real-time customer engagements, the Professional Services team offers technical and onboarding services to help developers accelerate API adoption and then focus on developing innovative business solutions for customers. "We had a very close working relationship with the Capital One DevExchange team. They're always willing to hop on a call and work with us to identify and resolve issues, answer questions throughout the development cycle," said Ellen.

To sum it all up

The DevExchange platform has been designed to give developers the tools that they need to build and grow their businesses. CreditCards.com was able to integrate the Credit Offers API into their experience and then scale to other partners using the same data, maximizing the value by receiving and distributing accurate and timely product credit card data.

Learn more about the Credit Offers API as well as our Bank Account Starter and Rewards APIs here. You could get access to an API like this, and even start testing it in the sandbox, by signing up for a DevExchange account.