In December 2018 we launched the first version of our ISA API. In July 2019 we launched ShareInPay. The first company to use these tools was ShareIn. We integrated them directly into ShareInInvest, our configurable white label investment platform. We were the first customers for this tech.
Both ShareInPay and the ISA API were born out of necessity. We built the ISA API because we needed to be able to pull together reports for HMRC and this had to be decoupled from and independent to our investment platform data. We built ShareInPay after searching for a CASS compliant payments solution that would work with our investment platform and comply with HMRC directive requirement that e-money is not a suitable solution for ISA money.
Today ShareInPay is being used in all of our customer platforms as well as businesses with their own platforms and use cases.
There's an expression in startup parlance that you should "eat your own dog food" and it's the practice of using your own products, also known as "dogfooding". It's important as by using your products you will come to understand the flaws with them and have empathy with your customers when they integrate with them.
Well it's fair to say that we've been dogfooding big time. Today ShareInPay is integrated with all of our customer platforms and processes millions of pounds in transactions.
Dogfooding had another unexpected beneficial consequence. New software products can struggle with the problem that no one wants to be the first customer. Being the first customer is risky. You're likely to find issues, it's not been road tested, it's being road tested on you and you'll carry the cost of those issues. This is fine if the benefits are so big that they out-way the cost and that's how new products can gain traction. But if you could avoid being the first business to road test the product then you would. We had to "road test" our own product. When we're asked who else is using this we're able to point to the platforms we're managing that are all using ShareInPay. Dogfooding generated much needed social proof that these are robust, production ready solutions. So by dogfooding you partly tackled the demand friction of those not wanting to be the first customer.
If you are looking for a CASS compliant payment solution that is suitable for direct investment, distribution of loan repayments to lenders, payment of dividend income to investors, collection of deposits for nominee account trade settlement, payins of ISA money then ShareInPay could be for you. If you need to record ISA activity then our ISA API and ISA Manager service could be for you. You can read more about the available endpoints here.
If you'd like to find out more about any of ShareIn's API products, then please get in touch and speak to one of the ShareIn team.