Beyond anti-fraud for financial services: where will the next wave of network API growth come from?

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Network APIs are gaining real commercial traction, led by strong early results from identity and anti-fraud use cases. As these APIs mature, operators face a new challenge: how to scale adoption beyond financial services. This article explores early success stories and the emerging opportunities in new verticals.

The mobile network API market is building momentum, with identity APIs providing a strong foundation for scale

The mobile network API market is expanding rapidly as operators convert early interest into real technical and commercial deployments. Based on STL’s analysis of the GSMA’s Open Gateway API deployment tracker, there has been a 43% increase in network API launches since January 2025. While there is strong growth in other API areas such as network performance and location, it’s clear that identity remains the dominant segment of the market: 67% of launched APIs belong to the digital identity family (which includes SIM Swap, Number Verification and Device Location Verification).

This early concentration is expected. Identity verification aligns with clear customer pain points, established willingness to pay, and well-defined use cases, particularly in financial services. We have long argued that identity APIs present the logical “low-hanging fruit”, delivering near-term revenues and early proof points.

For operators waiting for confirmation that network APIs can create tangible value, the market is now delivering this evidence. A growing base of real deployments and customer outcomes is strengthening business cases internally and making it easier to engage enterprise buyers in conversations about high-impact, low-friction use cases.

At the same time, this concentrated focus naturally raises a more strategic question: beyond identity APIs and anti-fraud use cases, where will the next phase of revenue growth come from?

Early successes are proving the value for anti-fraud use cases, particularly for financial services

What differentiates the market today from even 12 months ago is the availability of concrete, measurable outcomes. Across geographies, early trials and deployments have demonstrated that mobile network APIs can significantly reduce fraud, speed up authentication, and improve customer experience.

Early successes include:

• MovyPay (Argentina): 80% reduction in chargeback fraud. Argentinian financial services provider MovyPay integrated a SIM Swap API, via a local aggregator, to check if a SIM has recently been swapped before approving a payment. Previously, fraudsters used SIM swap techniques to intercept SMS one-time passwords and make unauthorised transactions, resulting in costly chargebacks. Within six months of adopting the SIM Swap API, MovyPay has seen an 80% reduction in chargeback fraud, alongside sharp declines in account takeovers and unauthorised transactions. The API also lowered operational costs by reducing the number of manual reviews required.
• Lydia Solutions (France): Faster authentication, fewer attacks. In Europe, Lydia Solutions – a French payments and saving app – used a Number Verification API through Vonage to automatically authenticate users through MNO data instead of relying on one-time SMS passwords. The solution has reduced authentication latency by up to 50%, virtually eliminated social engineering attacks, and improved conversion rates thanks to a smoother user experience. Lydia now verifies tens of thousands of users daily through this silent authentication flow.
• China Mobile: Detecting device/SIM mismatches at scale. It is not just financial services providers which have seen the benefit of identity APIs in reducing fraud. China Mobile has deployed a combined Device Swap and SIM Swap solution to combat a growing black market for unlocked devices, which fraudsters exploit to mask identity changes that traditional verification methods cannot detect. By cross-checking device and SIM changes, the operator identified over 1.4 million SIM cards with mismatched ownership and reduced related fraud cases by 79% in one pilot city after a year of operation.

Planning for the roadmap ahead: three paths for growth

Source: STL Partners

Identity APIs will continue to grow, and there is still share to capture in the financial services segment. However, operators must also plan for what comes next. Although we expect anti-fraud and authentication use cases to remain important revenue contributors through to 2030, the largely wholesale nature of identity APIs limits their long-term potential. As deployments scale, operators should expect price erosion and commoditisation, much like what traditional connectivity services are facing today. This dynamic does not diminish their importance — but it does mean they cannot form the entire strategic focus of the network API market.

To expand their role and unlock new areas of growth, STL defines three pathways for operators to scale beyond the ‘entry level API market’:

1. Capability expansion: Develop new APIs for established markets (primarily financial services providers). This means extending or enhancing the anti-fraud and identity capabilities already in market — for example, SIM Swap and Number Verification. This pathway deepens operator presence in their most familiar vertical, and builds on continued demand from established customer segments.

2. Customer expansion: Sell today’s APIs into new verticals and use cases. This pathway is about understanding synergies with early successes — for example, where frictionless onboarding, identity verification or fraud risk checks are relevant in other sectors — and targeting industries such as media, retail, transport, manufacturing and public safety. This approach allows operators to grow with minimal incremental development effort, making it the most immediate and practical route to scale.

3. API innovation: Build new APIs for new markets. This pathway is often about building new APIs for markets that are more distanced from today’s anti-fraud focused wins. These tend to be capabilities such as network performance, device status, or quality-on-demand — areas where operators can increasingly expose network control and automation rather than just information.

Beyond banking: what are the emerging use cases and customer segments to target?

The application of network APIs beyond financial services is already underway, with several operators demonstrating how identity and network data can deliver value in new verticals. Early examples illustrate how operators are broadening the set of APIs they are offering, and the new use cases and verticals they are beginning to target.

Media & entertainment: Reducing friction in user onboarding (TIM Brazil)

In the media sector, using the Number Verification API to authenticate sign-in has delivered measurable benefits beyond fraud reduction. For TIM Brazil, the authentication time for the TIM Fun service was cut from 19 seconds to 8 seconds, while success rates rose from 80% to 99% in the year to March 2025. In total, the TIM Fun app completed more than three million authentications using the API, demonstrating its reliability at scale. TIM is now commercialising Number Verification for banks, fintechs, digital wallets and other digital services, signalling growing cross-industry demand for frictionless onboarding.

Manufacturing: Enabling safer, smarter industrial operations (Orange + Shabodi demo)

In the manufacturing sector, Orange and Shabodi have demonstrated how Device Location Verification and Quality-on-Demand (QoD) APIs can significantly improve efficiency and performance. In a live demonstration at MWC Barcelona 2025, a 5G-connected camera and a temperature/humidity sensor detected anomalies on a production line in real time, enabling remote monitoring. When an abnormal reading was detected, the solution used the Location Verification API to identify the nearest camera and then triggered a QoD API to guarantee the bandwidth needed for high-quality video session . This demo illustrates how APIs can support resource-intensive applications such as computer vision or process automation, improving productivity and safety while also reducing cabling costs. Orange is now implementing proofs of business in France, Spain, Belgium and Poland, moving the concept from demonstration to commercial validation.

Public safety: Enhancing protection with location-aware alerts (ViRe)

In partnership with Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone, i2CAT and LAUDE have developed a Violence Restriction (ViRe) application which uses Device Location Verification and Geofencing APIs to alert victims and law enforcement if a restraining order is violated. This provides peace of mind to victims and insights into perpetrators’ patterns of behaviour, allowing law enforcement to act more effectively to ensure the safety of victims while reducing risk and fraud in restraining orders.

Elderly care: Improving accessibility through assisted navigation (China Telecom)

Location verification APIs are also being used in aged care trials in China. China Telecom’s TeleNavi combines an internally developed voice-only AI model with a Device Location API to help elderly residents hail taxis with ease. In trials across two cities, TeleNavi improved the transportation experience of around 600,000 elderly users by overcoming both GPS limitations and dialect barriers. The system determines a user’s position within five metres after just 25 seconds of voice interaction, providing accurate and timely support for ride-hailing and navigation.

Conclusion

These examples represent only a small snapshot of activity across the industry, but they make one thing clear: network APIs are delivering real value. Identity APIs have provided the foundation for early momentum, helping operators demonstrate impact and build confidence with enterprise customers.

The next stage is about scaling the broader network API opportunity – applying proven APIs in new verticals, planning for the inevitable commoditisation of identity use cases, and laying the groundwork for more advanced, higher-value API categories.

For a deeper view on where growth will come from — and how operators can evolve their strategies — see our full report, Mobile network APIs: The opportunity beyond anti-fraud in financial services.