Stay connected
Subscribe to our corporate payments blog to stay on top of payment innovations.
Payments
Why developer experience is becoming a competitive advantage in payments
For years, payment providers competed mainly on rates, network reach, and reliability. Now there’s another factor shaping deals: how easy the provider is to actually build with.
The short answer: developer experience (DX) — how quickly an engineering team can integrate, test, and launch with a payment API — is increasingly tied to which vendors win deals and how fast revenue starts flowing. Companies that are fully API-first are far more likely to generate meaningful revenue from their APIs, and the strongest payment platforms can get a developer from signup to a successful test transaction with minimal friction.
Here’s what that means in practice, and how to evaluate it.
What is developer experience (DX) in payments?
Developer experience is how easy it is for an engineering team to integrate, test, and launch a payment feature. That includes documentation quality, sandbox access, software development kit (SDK) design, error handling, and how quickly a developer can go from signup to processing a test transaction.
It matters because, in recent years, payments have increasingly been recognized as a strategic opportunity rather than just a back-office function. Companies are embedding payouts, disbursements, and card issuance directly into their own software. A smooth integration can ship in days. A clunky one can turn into a multi-week project that delays revenue.
What is an API?
API stands for Application Programming Interface. Think of it as a standardized messenger that lets two software systems talk to each other. When your app needs to process a payment, it doesn’t need to know how the payment provider’s internal systems work — it just sends a request through the API, and the API handles the rest.
A practical analogy: an API is like a restaurant menu. The menu (API) tells you exactly what you can order (available actions), how to place your order (request format), and what you’ll get back (response). You don’t need to know what’s happening in the kitchen — you just need the menu.
In payments, an API lets businesses add checkout, payouts, or card issuance to their own software without building those capabilities from scratch. Developers write a few lines of code that call the payment provider’s API, and the provider takes care of processing, compliance, and settlement on the back end.
The quality of that API — how well it’s documented, how quickly it responds, and how clearly it reports errors — is what “developer experience” is all about.
What the data shows: API-first companies earn more from their APIs
The clearest evidence comes from Postman’s 2025 State of the API Report, which surveyed more than 5,700 developers, architects, and executives. The headline finding: 43% of fully API-first organizations generate more than 25% of their total revenue from APIs, compared to just 23% of “somewhat” API-first companies and 16% of organizations that aren’t API-first at all.
That’s nearly a threefold gap between the top and bottom cohorts — and it’s not a niche trend. Per Postman’s announcement of the report, 83.2% of organizations have now adopted some level of an API-first approach.
The takeaway for payments: platforms that make integration easy tend to perform better with embedded payments — not necessarily the ones with the lowest fees.
The reverse also holds. Dots’ analysis of API-first payment platforms found that insufficient documentation can waste as much as 40% of developer time spent searching for answers, and poorly designed APIs generate roughly three times more support tickets. Time developers spend untangling docs or filing tickets is time not spent shipping revenue-generating features.
Why DX is becoming a real differentiator in vendor selection
Engineering teams increasingly have a say in vendor selection, and they evaluate payment providers the way they’d evaluate any other infrastructure: documentation, SDK quality, webhook reliability, and clear error messages. Each point of friction is a chance for a developer to consider a competitor instead.
The risk isn’t just a lost transaction — it can be a lost account before the relationship even begins.
What good developer experience looks like
If you’re evaluating payment infrastructure, look for these four things:
Instant sandbox access — no demo call or approval wait before you can test
Clear, actionable error messages — including whether a failed request is safe to retry
Real-time webhooks — push notifications when transactions settle or fail, instead of polling
Documentation with working code samples — in the languages your team actually uses, not just reference tables
Why this matters beyond checkout
The same principles apply to how businesses pay suppliers and partners — virtual card issuance is a good example. A well-built, API-first integration lets a finance or engineering team connect automated payments into existing systems (ERP, accounting software, custom platforms) without a lengthy custom build.
Done well, this can take a business from “we want to automate supplier payments” to having an automated system live in a matter of days rather than months.
Visit the WEX Developer Portal
FAQ
What is developer experience (DX) in payments?
Developer experience is how easy it is for an engineering team to integrate and build with a payment provider’s API — including documentation quality, sandbox access, SDK design, and error handling. Strong DX means a developer can go from signup to a test transaction in minutes, not weeks.
What is an API?
An API (Application Programming Interface) is a standardized way for two software systems to communicate. In payments, an API lets your app send a payment request to a provider’s system and get a response back — without needing to understand what’s happening under the hood.
Why does developer experience matter for revenue?
Postman’s 2025 State of the API Report found that 43% of fully API-first organizations generate more than 25% of total revenue from APIs, versus just 16% of non-API-first organizations — a strong link between integration quality and business outcomes.
How does poor developer experience create costs?
Insufficient documentation can waste up to 40% of developer time searching for answers, and poorly designed APIs trigger roughly 3x more support tickets, per Dots’ research. Both slow adoption and delay revenue.
How does this relate to virtual cards and supplier payments?
A well-designed, API-first payment infrastructure makes it faster for finance and engineering teams to integrate tools like virtual cards into existing systems — ERP, accounting software, or custom platforms — without a lengthy custom build, often in days rather than months.
Are you ready to take your business payments to the next level?
Explore how WEX solutions can help you gain efficiencies, cut costs, and generate revenue.
Contact us to get started
For more insights and updates on corporate payments, check out:
Learn more about how WEX payment solutions can be tailored to your business, so you can accelerate and streamline operations while creating lasting growth and success for your organization.
The information in this blog post is for educational purposes only. It is not legal or tax advice. For legal or tax advice, you should consult your own legal counsel, tax, and investment advisers.
Copyright ©2026 WEX Inc. All rights reserved. The information in this document is subject to change without notice.