THE FORAGE STORY
America has a food insecurity problem.
Sadly, this isn’t news to most.
42 million (approximately 1 in 8) Americans rely on the USDA federally administered Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“SNAP”), formerly referred to as food stamps. Upwards of $200B in federal funds are disbursed annually via the electronic benefits transfer (“EBT”) payments system to support SNAP and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) programs.
Despite the recent explosion in online grocery commerce, those who are in the most need of support have limited options when choosing to spend their federal funds online.
The problem lies squarely within online payment acceptance.
SNAP benefits are only accepted online by roughly 200 retailers, yet recipients heavily rely on online grocery. More than 35% are families that care for elderly members, children, and other dependents. Around 20% are on disability, and more than 14 million live in food deserts, where fresh groceries are physically difficult to access. Online grocery expands access and choice, for those who need it most.
Forage, a San Francisco based fintech company, is using technology to democratize access to government benefits.
Just as Stripe simplified accepting online payments for credit/debit with just a few lines of code, Forage is revolutionizing the acceptance of EBT SNAP and complex government payments.
And what better way to do this than with a robust suite of APIs that cuts straight through the complexity of processing online EBT payments, enabling grocery retailers of all sizes the ability to integrate EBT as a payment method into their online checkout process with ease.
When you consider that bringing a retailer’s EBT acceptance online will directly support a family in need, you begin to grasp the power of Forage’s mission that goes well beyond just payments.
API STRATEGY
Building a traditional payments API is not easy. You have regulations, compliance, data privacy, banks, networks, and many other parties to comply with in each line of code you deploy.
Government sponsored technology scales this complexity to a new level.
There are state sponsored processors, split tender implications, itemized tax & receipt requirements, refund policies (ex: SNAP & EBT charges are immediate at checkout, unlike a traditional credit card payment), and a multitude of other considerations.
Flexibility and simplicity are at the core of Forage’s APIs - offering several integration options for retailers based on their needs and simplifying the complex world of government disbursements.
Fully hosted checkout pages, native app SDKs, JS libraries, and a powerful suite of endpoints enable retailers to pick & choose their integration options based on their desired speed to market and development resources.
Q&A
We spoke to Ofek (co-founder, CEO) and Victor (co-founder, CTO) about the company’s initial API development and continuous growth, highlighted below.
How would you describe your initial design philosophy behind building the Forage API?
We wanted to make the Forage API as intuitive to today’s developers as possible, while keeping it flexible for future developers. For example, when we developed a resource to represent a customer’s card, we defined a Payment Method instead of an EBT Card endpoint. This generic resource makes it easier to support future payment types.
Forage’s partners consist of merchants of all shapes and sizes, but a few key customers to note are Tops and Meijer, and platforms like Flashfood, Shopify and Homesome. Forage helps partners unlock new, highly incremental revenue streams, and ultimately do good business by doing good.
Why did you opt for a REST API over GraphQL?
Unlike a front-end heavy application, a Payments API requires very little composition. We knew we would have relatively few models pulling data from relatively few places, at least compared to popular consumer applications built on GraphQL (ex: Airbnb, Lyft, Instacart). Since we do not necessarily need GraphQL, we went with the API design style we believed would be most familiar to the highest number of developers. Docs tooling for REST is also more advanced than it is for GraphQL; at a developer tooling startup, shipping docs quickly is a high priority for both sales and customer support teams.
Anything else to share about the API architecture?
Developers expect an EBT Payments API to function much like the APIs they use to build their credit card integrations. However, legacy EBT infrastructure lags behind the credit card industry. Forage’s challenge is to abstract complexity, and provide developers an experience equivalent to a modern, and familiar payments stack.
How did you decide to build docs following the Open API Spec, while hosting on Readme?
Shipping docs quickly is mission-critical to an API company. Because OAS is a universal standard, many API tools like Readme can ingest a single file and output clean, professional docs in minutes. Especially when the Forage team was only a few engineers, a docs tool helped us save developer resources and quickly share our product with prospects.
What is your most effective strategy for supporting merchant developers?
Documentation, communication, and collaboration are our key principles. Detailed docs give our customers a starting point, and then we deploy shared Slack channels for real-time communication to speed up integration. Finally, we leverage collaboration into product improvements. We’re frequently updating our APIs to improve the developer experience. Building a B2B company means that developers are frequent customers, and that you get to speak directly to them when you help them integrate. Squeeze as much out of this advantage as possible!
How does supporting developers pre-sale/discovery vs. during integration differ?
During pre-sale, we answer questions, share docs with technical decision makers, and focus on doing everything we can to educate developers. At the integration stage, the focus shifts to collaborating with developers, actively troubleshooting any issues to reduce Time to Hello World and ensure that the integration goes as smoothly as possible.
What’s the role of a Solutions Engineer at Forage?
Solutions Engineers at Forage bridge the gap between customers and engineering. They listen to each customer’s unique needs and collaborate with them on the best path to integrating with Forage. Internally, Solutions Engineers also share customer insights that help our product and engineering teams iteratively improve the product that we’re building.
How long does integrating with Forage typically take?
Integrations take anywhere from two weeks to five months, depending on the customer’s tech stack and how they decide to integrate with Forage. Compared to +9 month integrations with our competitors, Forage prides itself on delivering best-in-class software and service for our customers.
How do you update the API over time?
From a design principles perspective, we update the API when today’s developers share feedback that improves the product for future developers. For example, we built the Custom Checkout UI when a customer requested a more flexible version of the Fully Hosted UI.
From a technical perspective, we use a date-based versioning scheme that enables us to break the API spec in certain situations. Customers can pass an API-Version header in requests that tells Forage to point to different view logic. In general, we try to ship as few breaking features as possible.
If you could build any API in the world to solve a particular problem or just for fun, what would it be and why?
“We’re already building it! At the same time, we know that we’re just getting started (which is one of the Forage company principles, in fact!). EBT SNAP is only one of many benefits that people depend on for basic needs today. We envision a world where we enable entire ecosystems of complex, regulated payments, empowering as many people as possible to use their benefits online.”
POSTscript
Special thanks to Ofek, Victor, and the entire Forage team for being part of the inaugural API POST newsletter!
If you're interested in learning more about Forage, you can find them at joinforage.com
If you have an API related topic or API company that you think we should explore, feel free to comment below or reach out directly to us at theapipost.substack.com