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April 16, 2021

Video: Amias Gerety Moderates API-First Infrastructure Panel

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QED Investors Partner Amias Gerety moderates a panel featuring Chris Dean, Ayo Omojola, Rija Javed and Leandra Fishman discussing what it means to build a product using services delivered by API.

APIs are everywhere and everyone accepts that incorporating API-based tools (like Stripe and Plaid) or using API-based architecture (micro-services) are best practices. But what does it mean to actually build a product using services delivered by API, and what does it mean to build a company that sells services via API?

This session includes perspectives on approaching the banking system like an API, the significance of the recent Supreme Court ruling on API copying as fair use and the untapped potential of APIs.

QED Investors Partner Amias Gerety moderates a panel featuring Chris Dean, Ayo Omojola, Rija Javed and Leandra Fishman discussing what it means to build a product using services delivered by API.

APIs are everywhere and everyone accepts that incorporating API-based tools (like Stripe and Plaid) or using API-based architecture (micro-services) are best practices. But what does it mean to actually build a product using services delivered by API, and what does it mean to build a company that sells services via API?

This session includes perspectives on approaching the banking system like an API, the significance of the recent Supreme Court ruling on API copying as fair use and the untapped potential of APIs.

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01

Settlement Collapse

Value transfer moves from days - corresponding banking, T+1 securities - to seconds. Working capital tied up in float is released.

02

Cost Collapse

Marginal transaction cost approaches zero: fractions of a cent, versus 1-6% on card and corresponding rails.

03

Programmability

Money becomes an object that carries logic - escrow, splits, rebates, compliance - executed by code, not back offices.

Pure infrastructure with no revenue accrual

Layer-1 chains and general-purpose middleware — outside our circle of competence and typically outside our stage.

Speculative asset creation

NFT platforms, memecoins, prediction markets styled as products — mapping to none of the five functions; structurally uninvestable for us.

Three structural truths cut across all five functions.

(a)

Regulated-first wins

The 2020/21 cycle proved permissionless purity does not survive contact with real financial regulation. GENIUS, MiCA, CLARITY and the UK/Singapore regimes are producing founders who start from “how do we get licensed” and build backwards — precisely the founder profile QED has always preferred.
(b)

Incumbents upgraded, not disintermediated

JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are jointly building a tokenized-deposit network; Visa launched a stablecoin platform in July 2026; 140+ businesses signed an open stablecoin standard. Banks migrate — and new-generation infrastructure companies own the picks and shovels of that migration.
(c)

Emerging markets feel it first

Every function improves most where the fiat experience is worst: cross-border payments, dollar access, investment product availability, working-capital finance. Those are exactly the geographies where QED has fintech ventures’ deepest footprint. Our geographic distribution is not incidental to the tokenization thesis — it is the thesis.

Trade & working-capital finance

Finkargo( LatAm import finance) and OatFi(B2B working-capital infrastructure) sit directly on flows whose logical settlement layer is stablecoin.

Collateralized digital-asset lending

Tokenized Treasuries, equities and stablecoin holdings as instant, programmable collateral.

On-chain private credt

Maple, Centrifuge and emerging institutional protocols - credit funds migrating to programmable rails.

Why QED is advanced

Credit is QED's craft: distinguishing lending businesses from fintechs pretending to be one, charge-offs earned from charge-offs deferred. On-chain credit is a straight-line extension, not a stretch.