Announcing Astra's API and Developer Program
Through the Astra API, you can now add money movement and financial automation to your product.
We are excited to share that we've launched Astra's developer program!
As of today, our API is officially live and you can now start developing within our sandbox environment. If you are building a financial product or are a fintech developer, you can now leverage our automation engine and integrated system for fast transfers!
Four years ago today, we founded Astra with what we thought was a simple mission – to make personal finance smarter. We envisioned a future where that intelligence was available *everywhere* you interfaced with your money. So we set out to build a platform that makes moving money universal, programmatic, and automatic.
Along the way, we designed and developed a system for flexible virtualization for bank accounts, a powerful automation engine for money movement, and best-in-class reliability for interbank transfers. Transfers processed through Astra have a 99.99% or better rate of naturally clearing to their destination! This turns your transfer creation, monitoring, risk, and reconciliation processes into a single API and means we can offer the fastest ACH settlement by default.
Our platform is a full-stack solution for financial automation – it includes integrated security, prevents transfer failures, and scales effectively with usage. Now you can integrate this technology into your own product, all through a single API.
So what can you build with Astra's API? A couple of example solutions:
Funding New Customer Accounts
When a new customer opens a bank account with your service, it's critical to fund that account from an external source as quickly as possible to create a positive user experience. The faster it clears into the new account, the sooner your customer can start using your product and generating revenue. Astra enables your customer to easily schedule inbound transfers from their existing bank accounts up to $25k and as fast as one business day.
Instant Direct Deposit Switching
Securing direct deposits from your customer's income moves your product closer to the center of your customer's financial life. But not all users are W2 wage earners and changing the settings with a payroll provider is slow and cumbersome. Astra provides flexible direct deposit switching that is effective immediately, no additional coordination required between the employer or payroll provider. And your customer can edit the percentage setting in just a couple of clicks!
Automatic Card Balance Refills
If you have a debit card product, it is crucial to ensure that there is always a balance available to spend. Your customers won't have to remember to check their balance and you won't miss out on the revenue from a failed charge. Astra can automatically transfer in additional funds whenever the balance dips below a predefined threshold. No additional input is required from your customers and no additional overhead for your tech stack.
We've developed the technology at Astra to empower you to create these solutions and more. We are excited to see what you build! Do you want to leverage money movement and financial automation for your product? Get started today!