Ripple's bank connectivity platform needed to go from adding connectors slowly to adding them daily. The old tool required 9 months of training and constant engineering escalation. We rebuilt it with AI at the core.
Only two people in the entire company could build bank connectors. A 9-month learning curve kept everyone else out. Over half of all builds required engineering escalation. And a new enterprise deal — Robinhood, needing 75+ banks — was waiting on a platform that couldn't scale. The connector tool wasn't just slow. It was the single point of failure blocking the business.
What We Built
We analyzed 46 banks and discovered a clear pattern: 75% use OAuth2 with MTLS, 15% use signed keys with a handful of hash methods, and only 5–10% are truly custom. The platform treated every bank like a custom project. In reality, 80% could be templated.
The deeper issue wasn't the backend — it was solid. The problem was the interface: unintuitive configuration, no way to reuse similar setups, and authentication complexity that forced every build through the same two experts.
Upload a bank's documentation — PDF, developer portal, API specs — and the AI identifies which template matches, recommends the right endpoints, guides through authentication setup, and pre-fills configurations from similar banks it's already seen.
A solutions consultant with no engineering background can now build a standard bank connector end-to-end. The system knows when it can handle something and when to escalate — replacing tribal knowledge with a structured, AI-guided workflow.
For the 20% of banks that need custom flows, a visual workflow builder lets technical users compose multi-step authentication without writing code. HTTP requests, mapping, loops — all as modular, draggable blocks. Individual steps can be tested in isolation without running the full flow.
Templates are reusable. A JPMorgan OAuth flow can be copied and adapted for a new bank in minutes. The system remembers what worked before and suggests it for similar patterns.
The AI doesn't just follow templates — it learns. Pattern recognition across bank implementations means each new connector makes the next one faster. Self-healing capabilities use memory from previous solutions to diagnose errors in plain language, not API jargon.
What used to require an engineer reading stack traces now surfaces as actionable guidance anyone on the team can understand and act on.
Bank Complexity Breakdown
Standard Configurable
REST + OAuth/API keys. Config only.
Standard + Certificates
MTLS or standard encryption patterns.
Nonstandard Flows
Custom multi-step, bank-specific signing.
Manual Access
MFA required, file uploads, portal locks.
Two people could build connectors. Now anyone on the team can. The AI handles 80% automatically — and learns from every bank it connects.
More Case Studies
We design and deploy AI-native systems for companies moving fast in competitive markets.
Talk to LightCI