Why we chose to make our DXtrade APIs public

One of the most common queries that arise when our representatives are speaking to prospective clients is how long it will take to integrate a certain third-party product with our DXtrade platform.

Financial services businesses are always on the lookout for how they can upgrade their systems to offer the best all-round service to their users. Nowadays, this tends to mean that they rely on a mix of third-party services in combination with their own systems in order to tailor their offerings to the needs of their clients.

These solutions include market data and technical analysis, customer relationship management (CRM) software, compliance and risk management tools, customer service systems, marketing and analytics platforms, and more.

In practice, it means that each and every addition to their roster of internal and external software raises the question of how it can be integrated with the rest of their systems. When you hear people talking about APIs, this is basically what they’re concerned with.

What is an API

An API, short for Application Programming Interface, is a piece of software that allows different systems to talk to each other. Essentially, APIs connect different applications together.

But it’s not just about different individual programs communicating between themselves, for instance, a trading platform with a CRM. From our human perspective, we tend to regard a piece of software as a singular object. Nowadays, however, even the simplest pieces of software are really collections of different applications connected together via APIs.

In our trading platform example above, the frontend and backend, i.e. the software the trader uses and the software that’s connected to the broker’s trading infrastructure, are separate applications connected via an API.

Similarly, modern trading platforms, which allow users to perform all actions from within the same user interface (registration, funding, sign-in, charting, trading, account management, etc.) are actually a collection of different systems that all communicate with the relevant area of the brokerage in question.

Each of the above functions are like a software puzzle piece, connected to the brokerage through an API in order to allow those various features to work as seamlessly as they do.

A simple way to conceptualize APIs is to think of UIs (user interfaces) as being for humans and APIs as being for machines. UIs allow human beings to communicate their intentions with software, and APIs allow different pieces of software to communicate with each other.

The benefit of open APIs

It gets tricky when a software vendor treats their products as a walled garden and does not share API details and documentation to aid with integrations. This is why the question of integration arises so often.

This approach leads to vendor lock-in, where clients can’t easily integrate other products and services not belonging to the vendor because they use a proprietary API. Of course, there are ways around this, and in online trading, an entire cottage industry has sprung up around making stubborn software play nicely with other systems, but it can be a time-consuming and generally sub-optimal way of going about things.

Open APIs lead to collaboration, novel solutions, and allow a good piece of software to be more than just the sum of its parts. Google Maps is a perfect example of this. With its open API, other software developers can incorporate the power and accuracy of Google Maps into their own applications without having to build their own mapping application from scratch.

Our DXtrade APIs

At Devexperts, we have opted to make our APIs public, such as in the DXtrade API example below. This empowers brokers to build on top of the functionality of our core software, tailor it to their specifications, and integrate whatever third-party software they wish to make part of their offerings.

It also enables them to stand apart in a crowded marketplace, rather than being stuck with a cookie-cutter piece of software that they can’t integrate well with their other systems.

Below you’ll find a list of our DXtrade APIs, as well as a brief description of the functionality they enable. Full documentation page is available here.

DXtrade REST API: Enables various trading operations, account data, metrics, and market data. It allows a single account to trade on behalf of multiple accounts that are either visible, or anonymous, to the platform. It also allows for individual accounts to trade for themselves.

DXtrade Push API: Provides access to asynchronous account and market data updates such as pending orders being hit and trades being executed.

DXtrade FIX Market Data API: Allows users to view instrument data and to subscribe to market data streams.

DXtrade FIX Trading API: Allows B2B trading, such as the sending of orders and receipt of execution reports between a broker and an LP.

DXtrade Administrative REST API: Enables a wide range of account management functions, including deposits and withdrawals.

DXtrade Amazon SQS API : Complements the DXtrade Push API by offering reliable message delivery for B2B integrations via Amazon Simple Queue Service.

Ready-made integrations

Over the years we’ve had the opportunity to work with hundreds of companies from all areas of the financial landscape. This has enabled us to integrate a multitude of different third-parties with our platforms.

This means that DXtrade clients can pick and mix between an array of different features and services they would like their businesses to be able to offer to their traders, safe in the knowledge that all the integration work has already been done. Our pre-existing partnerships are effectively plug-and-play solutions that can be added to the functionality of our DXtrade platforms.

These integrations include alternative front-end charting solutions like TradingView, an array of liquidity providers such as FXCM and BitGo, asset custodians and clearing services like Citadel, market data via our subsidiary dxFeed, client portals, and CRMs, financial news portals like Dow Jones and Moody’s, marketing and analytics services, copy trading services, and more.

You can view a full list of our ready-to-go third-party integrations here.

Custom development is in our DNA

In the cases where an existing integration is not in place and the client, or third-party vendor, is not up to the task of integration, we are more than happy to perform the integration ourselves. Devexperts has a great deal of custom development experience, from simple integrations to building entire proprietary trading infrastructures from scratch.

In the past, we have worked with Nasdaq to make its trading and pricing data available to international investors. Our APIs have also been used to enable clients to become broker-agnostic, by sourcing their liquidity from multiple providers. We have also been involved in novel industry developments, such as the first trading open API FX trading platform with its own app store, enabling developers to create and sell their own apps on the platform.

The moral of the story?

As far as we’re concerned, being open is better. It has taken a while for this logic to filter down in our industry, however, the opportunities for collaboration, friendly competition, and evolution that open APIs provide can prove to be extremely valuable.

It can mean the difference between software being a standalone system that is solely reliant on the developers who produced it, and an ecosystem that developers are excited to create new solutions for. For us, it’s a no-brainer, and we encourage people to tinker with our software and help it work for them in new and interesting ways.