APIs are continuing to have their moment and fintech is reaping the benefits globally.

Earlier this week, Belvo announced a $43M Series A which the company believes is the largest Series A ever for a Latin American fintech company.

The YC-backed startup launched on Product Hunt a year ago with its Open Banking API platform to enable apps to connect to bank accounts with ease. Its founders recently told TechCrunch that their goals are similar to Plaid when it comes to open banking or open finance in that Belvo is “working to democratize access to financial data and empower end-users to port that data and share [it].”

We’ve previously touched on other products targeting the under and unbanked LATAM region. Belvo’s funding also reflects a continued trend towards a developer-first model for startups that leverages the utility of APIs.

Alpaca is in this cohort too having raised $10M last autumn along with a slew of other API startups with large funding rounds. Alpaca has used its funding to help accelerate building new features and products.

“I'm impressed by your shipping cadence!” - Hiten Shah commented.

Same. Since we covered Alpaca’s Fractional Trading API in late March, the company has launched Alpaca Broker API and Alpaca Data API.

Alpaca’s Broker API packages an end-to-end brokerage experience (opening accounts, money movements, fractional trading, etc.) for customers. The company partnered with Midas and Gotrade for their launch — the first international fintech trading apps to launch on Alpaca. The former, Midas, provides access to Turkish stock markets (as well as the US).

The latter, Gotrade, is another YC-backed startup that launched on Product Hunt last week. Built on the Alpaca API, the app allows anyone in the world (150 countries outside of the US) to invest in fractional shares of US stocks. Founder Rohit Mulani explained:

“Gotrade was born out of a personal frustration when we tried to get access to the US markets ourselves from Singapore. Gotrade levels the playing field between the haves and the have-nots. A farmer in Southeast Asia or a student in South America can own a fraction of the same portfolio as Warren Buffett.”

We want to note that all investors should understand any tax implications before investing, but you can take a look at your options to start:

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