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Xignite: Inspiring the Future of Finance with Easy and Speedy APIs

Xignite

Are companies like Xignite the key drivers of financial innovation?

Within minutes of his company’s keynote at FinDEVr this fall, Xignite founder and CEO, Stephane Dubois had already dropped the names of StockTwitsPersonal Capital, and Robin Hood. All headline-grabbing fintech companies that have chosen Xignite to supply the crucial market data that makes their innovations work.

Sharing the stage with software engineer Anand Viswanathan, Dubois used a real stock purchase to take the us from financial social network to PFM/investment advisory to trading platform, connecting the dots of a real fintech ecosystem with Xignite at the center.
Xignite the Market Data Cloud
From Xignite’s perspective what makes them the resource of choice for so many innovative fintech startups is that Xignite understands two key things about innovation in a competitive technology marketplace. First, it doesn’t matter how good your product or service is if you can’t get it to market before your competitors. Second, don’t make developers spend any more time on  the “financial market data piece” as Dubois calls it, than is absolutely necessary.
“Individual developers have an idea, a vision of building something unique,” Dubois explained.
“By creating something that developers can look at and say, ‘I can code this today’ it makes it easier for them to create and innovate,” Dubois said.
 
Ready, Set – Xignite!
It’s worth remembering that there was a time when getting access to market data itself was a challenge. “Historically sourcing and integrating market data has been very painful,” Dubois said from the stage at FinDEVr this fall. “It’s very complex area, its full of quirks and its littered with legacy technologies.” He recounted a story of Wealthfrontfounder Adam Rachleff, who became frustrated with legacy data providers, and decided instead to turn to Xignite for market data. 
Xignite Stephane Dubois
“We helped Andy build Wealthfront,” Dubois told developers. “And we can help you build your business.”
Founded in 2003 and headquartered in San Mateo, California, Xignite’s story has been about more than just building a better market data delivery mousetrap.  By 2008, the media had begun to pick up on how, in the words of TechCrunch’s Jeff Widman, Xignite was a “case study” in how a wide range of businesses – in this case Forbes.com – could take advantage of cloud-delivered data and free themselves from the costs and technology issues of legacy financial market data providers. 
As Dubois explained in an interview earlier this year, the previous generation of APIs assumed two things: slower networks than we have today, and applications that stored data. “Now the networks are faster and apps ask for data repeatedly rather than storing it,” he said.
This is what has allowed for “massive cloud ecosystems” such as Amazon Web Services, which Xignite leverages in order to support its own ecosystem of fintech builders and innovators.
Xignite Market Data APIs
Today Xignite offers a wide array of fintech solutions. Its Market Data Cloud provides real-time, historical, and reference financial data on instruments in all asset classes. Its Market Data Distribution solution is used by exchanges and vendors such as NASDAQ to provide transaction data especially through Xignite’s on-demand APIs. Large FIs can take advantage of Xignite’s Enterprise Data Distribution solution, which helps organizations clean up data redundancies, as well as provide data through a private, branded API catalog.
Xignite currently processes more than 15 billion API calls a month from more than 45 countries. Its FI partners include BlackRock, Charles Schwab, BNY Mellon, Natixis, andTD Ameritrade, and exchanges like the Nasdaq OMX and the NYSE both use Xignite to sell their data.
 
The Technology
Xignite calls itself a design company rather than a “market data” company. It’s another way of saying that in addition to accurately delivering data quickly, Xignite has to provide that data in ways that are easy for developers to deal with. “Market data is especially complex,” Dubois explained. “We demystify it so they can build apps super quickly. We also have everything they need in one place – a one-stop shop – and what they’ll need for tomorrow.”
Some of what makes Xignite help developers get their projects finished easier and to market faster may seem like minutiae to non-builders. But according to Vishwanathan, its the minutiae that matters. He points to the layout of Xignite’s Product Catalog, which offers “tons” of API operators for individual services such as Get GlobalDelayed Quote. This gives developers the maximum ways to get the data they need. The API test forms in Xignite APIs can be customized so that developers can see only the outputs they are interested in, and in-line documentation helps make sure that builders are know both exactly what they are getting and exactly how to integrate it into their projects.
Xignite Market Data Cloud
Xignite and the Fintech Gold Rush
Dubois thinks we are living in a “fintech gold rush”. And as such its Xignite’s job to provide prospectors with the shovels, pans, and dredges. Newly queued up is FactSet, which provides financial information and analytics to more than 50,000 customers via desktop analytics, mobile apps, and data feeds. Xignite announced earlier this month that its customers will have access to FactSet’s global fundamental market data via its APIs as early as Q4 of this year.
In making the announcement about FactSet, Dubois referred the challenge of “keep(ing) pace with innovation.” It’s a telling acknowledgement and heartening to hear for fans of the platform. After all, it was a change in the way that data moved and was used – from slow
er and locally stored to faster and distributed from the cloud – that helped give Xignite the advantage it has. It is impossible to know the next evolution in data, the form it takes or the way the apps of tomorrow will consume it. But in either event, it will be worth watching to see how Xignite grows and adapts to stay at the forefront of change.
What’s not likely to change any time soon, however, are the number of companies discovering providers like Xignite and deciding that cloud-based financial market data delivery is a better alternative.
“Whether you are a startup trying to topple the world order, or working for a large company and trying to hold on to what you’ve got, what you need is speed,” Dubois said. “We have the largest, fastest, most powerful set of RESTful APIs that will help developers get their products to market faster.”
 

RECENT NEWS

Partners with ESG Book to Drive Investor Sustainability Engagement


SAN MATEO, Calif.
, April 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Xignite, Inc., the leading provider of market data APIs to brokers and wealth managers, announced the launch of a new Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) data API in partnership with ESG Book, a global leader in ESG data and technology. Xignite's brokerage, wealth, and media customers can now increase user engagement and retention with state-of-the-art sustainability trading products.

As ESG investment has gone mainstream, today's digital investors, institutional investors, and corporations alike require ESG data to help them answer questions that range from a company's workforce diversity to its commitment to a net zero future. In this context, brokers and wealth managers can use ESG data to increase client engagement around their portfolios and differentiate their offerings in a very fragmented marketplace.

"We are thrilled to extend our highly scalable and advanced API platform to include ESG Book's real-time sustainability dataset. With the recent SEC announcement of proposals for climate disclosure, the momentum for sustainability data in the U.S. just keeps on building. If you do not offer ESG data and portfolio analytics to your clients today, you will run into growth and retention challenges," said Stéphane Duboi, the CEO of Xignite.

Dr Daniel Klier, CEO of ESG Book, said: "As capital markets transition towards a more sustainable, net-zero future, demand for accessible, comparable and transparent ESG data has never been higher. We are delighted to be partnering with Xignite, a global leader in API solutions, to deliver our real-time ESG data products to clients at both speed and scale through the latest cloud technology."

Xignite's new ESG API is designed to fast track the launch of ESG powered products. Transparent, well-structured and easy to understand ESG datasets eliminate the need for robust in-house ESG expertise. Advanced screener endpoints further simplify development by eliminating the need to maintain a database.

XigniteGlobalESG API covers a comprehensive universe of public companies domiciled in North America, EMEA, APAC, and Latin America. In addition to ESG scores, this API provides Global Compact scores, involvement data, temperature scores, and raw emissions data.

About Xignite

Xignite is the leading provider of market data API solutions to brokers, wealth managers, and the tech firms who serve them. Xignite has been disrupting the market data industry from Silicon Valley since 2003 when it introduced the first commercial REST API. Today, more than 700 firms use Xignite's APIs more than half a trillion times a month to deliver high-value data to digital investors. Visit xignite.com or follow us on Twitter @xignite.

About ESG Book

ESG Book is a global leader in sustainability data and technology. Through a cloud-based platform, ESG Book makes sustainability data more widely available and comparable for all stakeholders, enables companies to be custodians of their own data, provides framework-neutral ESG information in real-time, and promotes transparency. It counts many of the world's leading financial organisations among its clients, which collectively manage over $120 trillion in assets. www.esgbook.com

04/12/2022

Sales Up 50%. API Volumes Now Exceed Half a Trillion per Month.

Xignite, Inc., the leading provider of market data APIs to brokers and wealth managers, announced that 2021 was a banner year for its business. Xignite experienced more than 50% growth in new client bookings over 2020. Most of this growth was fueled by heavy demand from new brokerage and wealth management applications as more firms entered the business. Xignite also saw a 53% increase in API consumption to a whopping half a trillion requests a month - driven mainly by increased activity from digital investors as they consumed more and more data during the pandemic.

The Digital Investor Revolution was created by the convergence of zero-cost trading, fractional shares, working from home, the pandemic, and the emergence of a new and more powerful generation of retail investors. This has created significant momentum in trading and wealth management, primarily US-based equity and options trading. And it has fueled the entrance of a considerable number of new prominent players in the field, especially embedded finance providers. It all came to light in early 2021 with the Reddit and Gamestop phenomenon. But it has not proven to be short-lived. The transformation could be profound. Indeed Xignite saw its momentum accelerate in Q4-2021, with bookings growth exceeding 310% over the same quarter in 2020.

“Xignite is one of the oldest and most scalable commercial API infrastructures globally. It’s not a surprise that our clients have grown to rely on us for their mission-critical business needs,” says Stephane Dubois, Xignite’s CEO and Founder. “It’s not only the mind-numbing volumes that we have to deal with,” adds Dubois, “It’s also the 4-nine+ level of availability we deliver day in and day out coupled with the awesome market data quality and the high touch responsiveness of our support teams. These metrics matter to large embedded finance firms entering the business or legacy firms migrating to the cloud. They spend tens of millions of dollars entering the business. They don’t want to see it evaporate because of poor data quality or API availability.” 

About Xignite

Xignite powers the investing apps and services that enable millions of people to manage their portfolios and trade stocks from a phone or tablet with the industry’s best financial market data APIs. We help more than 700 fintech trading, investment, and analytics firms like Robinhood, SoFi, and Betterment provide digital investors with the market data they need, such as real-time stock prices and company news. Visit xignite.com or follow on Twitter @xignite.

03/10/2022

Xignite, Inc., the leading provider of market data APIs to brokers and wealth managers, announced the launch of a new cryptocurrency data API. Xignite’s brokerage, wealth, and media customers can now increase the value and stickiness of their services to digital investors by taking advantage of the depth and breadth of data offered by this API.

Investment in cryptocurrencies has increased dramatically over the last few years and has proven to draw new investors into the world of trading. As a result, brokerage companies are trying hard to make buying, selling, and holding Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), and other cryptocurrencies as easy as possible for their clients. The XigniteCrypto API is the first to bring together a vast universe of cryptocurrency information alongside the equity, ETF, and option data brokers and fund managers need to offer high-quality services to their clients. It also provides the depth of functionality required for them to engage customers and drive trading activity

“Cryptocurrencies tend to operate in their own world,” said Stephane Dubois, CEO, and Founder of Xignite. “This means that if you want to offer integrated equity, option, and crypto trading or analytics for your clients, you are going to have to cobble up a lot of heterogeneous data from many disparate sources, and that’s a pain,” adds Dubois. “With our new crypto API, you get the depth of coverage, the quality, and the reliability across all asset classes you need to grow your business - all in one integrated solution.”

Xignite’s new cryptocurrency API, XigniteCrypto, provides real-time and historical quotes for over 900 cryptocurrencies, including coins and tokens. It includes unique API endpoints that help firms engage digital investors, using the data and tools they need to make crypto trading decisions, including price alerts, historical charting, currency conversion, and cryptocurrency news.

About Xignite

Xignite is the leading provider of market data API solutions to brokers, wealth managers, and the tech firms who serve them. Xignite has been disrupting the market data industry from Silicon Valley since 2003, when it introduced the first commercial REST API. Since then, Xignite has continually taken advantage of new technologies to help its clients grow their business and serve their customers better by using financial market data effectively. Today, more than 700 firms use Xignite’s APIs more than half a trillion times a month to deliver high-value data to digital investors. Visit xignite.com or follow on Twitter @xignite.

 

02/15/2022

Xignite, Inc., a cloud-based market data distribution and management solutions provider for financial services and technology companies, announced a new Vendor of Record service for clients subscribing to real-time and delayed market data. The new service vastly simplifies the administration and reporting required by exchanges and often eliminates the need to pay redistribution fees, potentially saving clients thousands of dollars a month.

As an approved Vendor of Record, also called a Service Facilitator, Xignite can redistribute real-time and delayed equities and options pricing data from Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Options Price Reporting Authority (OPRA), OTC Markets (OTCM), and the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). 

Adhering to the complex compliance guidelines required by exchanges is extremely difficult for investment advisers, financial advisers, or order management software providers that need to display real-time or delayed data. Each exchange has its own unique set of regulations and compliance requirements, and clients need to prove that they have control over who receives the data, in what format, and for what use case. Xignite’s Vendor of Record service eliminates the administrative burden of tracking these complex compliance requirements.

The new service utilizes Xignite’s cloud-native Entitlements and Usage Microservices to give firms complete control and transparency of their data consumption and usage. Xignite provides data entitlements, usage tracking, and exchange reporting across various data sets, users, and applications to ensure exchange compliance. Xignite’s new service sometimes eliminates the need to pay expensive redistribution fees. Exchange fees for display data, regardless of the number of users, can cost upwards of $10,000 per month. These high fees are especially difficult for smaller financial firms with just a few real-time data users.  

“Maneuvering through the maze of required compliance policies, entitlements, usage tracking, and reporting requirements, and being subjected to frequent audits is no easy feat,” said Vijay Choudhary, Head of Product for Xignite. “Xignite’s mission is to “Make Market Data Easy.” Today’s announcement is another step towards this. We are taking away the administrative burdens and complexity of licensing market data and allowing our clients the freedom to focus on their investment and trading strategies and building innovative products.”

Xignite’s Vendor of Record service is available for professional users with internal and display-only use cases. The service is available now as an add-on service for subscribers of our real-time and delayed equities and options pricing data APIs. These include:

XigniteGlobalOptions

XigniteGlobalQuotes

XigniteGlobalRealTime

XigniteGlobalRealTimeOptions

XigniteNASDAQLastSale

About Xignite

Xignite has been disrupting the financial and market data industry from its Silicon Valley headquarters since 2003 when it introduced the first commercial REST API. Since then, Xignite has continually refined its technology to help Fintech and financial institutions get the most value from their data. Today, more than 700 clients access over 500 cloud-native APIs to build efficient and cost-effective enterprise data management solutions. Visit xignite.com or follow on Twitter @xignite.

09/21/2021