New SaaS twist: how FIS Code Connect keeps banks plugging into fintechs

Edited by ad hoc news Software & Services Desk. Reviewed before publication on 06/15/2026 at 9:05 PM ET. Details in the imprint.

FIS is sharpening its pitch to banks and fintechs with Code Connect, a subscription-based API platform that promises quicker access to hundreds of financial services without the usual integration headaches. The service sits on top of FIS’s core processing and payment systems and exposes them via standardized REST APIs, aiming to cut time-to-market for new digital products while reducing the need for custom point-to-point interfaces. For smaller and mid-sized institutions under pressure to modernize, Code Connect is positioned as a way to tap into the same building blocks used by larger players without hiring an army of developers.

What FIS Code Connect does for banks and fintechs

At its core, Code Connect is an API gateway and developer portal that aggregates interfaces to a wide range of FIS solutions, including banking, payments, risk, fraud, loyalty and analytics modules, and makes them available through a single integration layer. According to FIS, the catalog spans several hundred REST APIs that cover typical use cases such as account opening, card issuance, transaction data access, funds transfers, card controls and alerts, with documentation, SDKs and sample code aimed at speeding up development for client teams. To support this, the company maintains a central Code Connect developer portal where clients can browse APIs, view technical specs and manage access keys.

Unlike a one-off integration project, Code Connect is delivered as a managed cloud service with usage-based pricing and subscription tiers that scale with the number of APIs consumed and the underlying transaction volume. FIS emphasizes that the platform is designed to sit between the bank’s digital front end and multiple back-end systems, abstracting differences between legacy cores, card processors and payment rails so that product teams can focus on user experience instead of plumbing. In practice, a bank building a new mobile app can use Code Connect to pull in card account data, enable card-on-off controls, connect to real-time payment networks and add value-added services such as alerts or loyalty offers without separate projects for each component.

FIS also frames Code Connect as a collaboration tool for financial institutions and fintechs, allowing third-party developers to build on top of the bank’s environment under controlled access. Institutions can expose selected APIs from their own stack to partners through the same gateway, while relying on FIS for identity and access management, monitoring and throttling. That positioning aligns with open banking trends where banks are under regulatory and competitive pressure to provide secure data access to authorized fintech apps. By packaging governance and observability features into the platform, FIS is trying to ease compliance burdens while still giving product teams flexibility to experiment with new partnerships.

Recent customer activity suggests that the integration layer is resonating with regional banks seeking to speed up digital initiatives. When BankSouth in the US chose the FIS Horizon core system, it highlighted Horizon’s ability to work with integrated fintech solutions through FIS tooling to support AI-driven banking innovation, and Code Connect is one of the company’s primary vehicles for those integrations. That kind of deployment illustrates how the platform fits into FIS’s broader product stack: Horizon provides the core ledger, while Code Connect provides standardized APIs that make it easier to plug in capabilities such as chatbots, analytics engines or embedded finance modules from FIS and outside partners. This bundling helps FIS defend its core processing franchise as newer cloud-native competitors court mid-market banks.

From a technical standpoint, Code Connect reflects FIS’s shift toward microservices and event-driven architectures for its own products. The company has said in its developer-facing materials that the platform supports modern authentication standards, including OAuth 2.0 and token-based security, and is designed to integrate with clients’ CI/CD pipelines so that banks can treat API calls as configurable services within their DevOps workflows. To lower the barrier for innovation teams, FIS offers sandbox environments where developers can test against simulated data before moving to production, and provides sample applications that demonstrate how to wire the APIs into mobile and web front ends. A detailed description of these capabilities is outlined on FIS’s official developers site, which the company uses to attract both bank and fintech audiences.

Commercially, Code Connect sits within FIS’s Banking Solutions segment and supports the group’s broader transition toward recurring, cloud-based revenue rather than traditional software licensing. In investor presentations, FIS has pointed to its banking and capital markets platforms as key drivers of long-term growth as clients migrate workloads off legacy on-premise systems to outsourced infrastructure. By bundling Code Connect with core and digital banking deals, the company can increase the stickiness of those relationships and potentially upsell additional API-based services over time. FIS is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and its shares (ISIN US31620M1062) most recently changed hands on NYSE in US dollars, with performance tracking the broader financial technology sector as banks reassess long-term digitization budgets; the company provides further detail on segment reporting and strategy in its latest investor relations overview.

This article was a.i.-assisted and editorially reviewed. Product information without warranty; prices and availability may change at short notice. Not investment advice and not a buy or sell recommendation. Trading involves risk up to and including the total loss of invested capital.