Show HN: Affix API – API for open e-commerce buyer data (affixapi.com)

Affix API is an OAuth 2.1 developer API for Amazon buyer data.

Wedge: API for Amazon buyer data. Shockingly, no one has done this. [1]

Vision: API for e-commerce buyer data. All e-commerce spend data is unlocked via Affix. A massive enhancement to existing open banking data API. Affix: the item level bank data API.

Background: Everything is going to get connected. Plaid was revolutionary in creating an API to allow fintechs to develop on top of banking data. Banks hated this at first, but the data was too valuable to remain locked up. Many valuable use cases that benefit businesses and consumers are created when this data is unlocked.

There are API companies that have followed in Plaid's footsteps: - banking (Plaid, Finicity, Truelayer, Nordigen, Saltedge) - payroll (Argyle, Pinwheel, Merge.dev, Palenca, Mistho, Rollee) - email (Nylas) - utilities (Pelm, Arcadia Arc) - e-commerce seller data (API2Cart, A2X, Rutter) - insurance (Canopy Connect) - healthcare (Redox, Metriport, Vivanta)

YC has funded many such companies: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?query=plaid

These integration / API aggregator companies are so prevalent, there are even meta-API aggregator companies to develop on top of these, such as Codat.

Business case for Affix: Amazon accounts for 14% of discretionary spending in the US alone [2]. Its 2022 revenue was $513 billion [3]. Add the likes of Walmart, Target, Best Buy and so on. Now imagine going to the UK, Europe, and India. Altogether, there are trillions of dollars worth of transaction data waiting to be unlocked in the same way Plaid unlocked your banking data. And there is no buyer-side API for this data. That’s what Affix plans to do.

Some example use cases that developers can use this data to create richer experiences for consumers and businesses: - expense management software (Airbase, Expensify, Brex, Ramp, Pleo) - personal finance / budgeting software (Mint, Monarch Money, YNAB, Co-Pilot, Rocket Money) - automated bookkeeping (Kick.co, Keeper Tax) - accounting software (Quickbooks, Sage) - bank data transaction enrichment (Dateio, Ntropy)

Take transaction enrichment companies as an example. They all use expensive and complicated ML models to “enrich” bank transactions. But they merely add 5-10 data points, each one with a probability of correctness score. Affix has the raw data. 40+ data points for every transaction, all 100% correct. No ML needed, lots of money saved.

I would love to get honest feedback and any tips on how to move this forward. If you want to talk to me personally, drop me a line: john [at] affixapi.com

Developers: Here's a link you can use to test it out:

https://dev.connect.pay-api.link/?client_id=697AC05E-2F94498...

and here are some sandbox tokens:

https://docs.affixapi.com/#section/Sandbox-tokens

Footnotes:

[1] Amazon does have a buyer-side API for business accounts, which Intuit uses to connect Quickbooks. However it seems difficult to access (send an email with your use-case to be approved), and only a handful of apps are on the Amazon Business App Center. Not to mention, there is nothing for the buyer-side non-business accounts (majority of Amazon accounts). [2] https://www.ecommercenext.org/lead-of-amazon-in-consumer-dis... [3] 2022 online store...