Real-Time Ledger API | Build Financial Applications

Introduction

Modern fintech applications require real-time financial data. Whether you are building a payment gateway, a neobank, a lending platform, or any application that handles money, users expect instant balance updates and accurate transaction histories. Batch processing and nightly reconciliation are no longer acceptable.

NAYA's Real-Time Ledger API provides the infrastructure to build financial applications that respond instantly to every transaction while maintaining the accuracy and auditability that regulators and auditors demand.

The Problem

Building real-time financial applications without purpose-built ledger infrastructure creates significant challenges:

Latency Expectations: Users expect balance updates immediately after transactions. Applications that show stale data, even for seconds, generate support tickets and erode confidence.

Consistency at Scale: As transaction volume grows, maintaining consistency between concurrent operations becomes increasingly difficult. Race conditions lead to incorrect balances that are difficult to detect and correct.

Event Sourcing Complexity: Many teams attempt to build their own event-sourced ledger systems. While conceptually straightforward, implementing correct semantics for financial transactions, including atomicity, immutability, and accurate querying, requires significant expertise.

Read-Write Performance Trade-offs: Financial applications need both fast writes (transaction processing) and fast reads (balance queries, transaction histories). Optimizing for one often sacrifices the other.

Downstream System Integration: Real-time ledger data must flow to analytics systems, reconciliation processes, accounting systems, and user interfaces. Building these integrations without a coherent data architecture leads to inconsistencies.

Audit Requirements: Real-time operations must not sacrifice auditability. Every transaction must be fully traceable, with complete history preserved indefinitely.

The NAYA Solution

NAYA provides a Real-Time Ledger API optimized for modern financial application requirements.

Sub-Second Transaction Processing

Post transactions through the API and receive confirmation in milliseconds. NAYA's architecture is optimized for high-throughput, low-latency operations without sacrificing consistency or durability.

Consistent Balance Queries

Query account balances with confidence that you are seeing the current state, including all recent transactions. NAYA provides strong consistency guarantees, eliminating the "eventual consistency" problems common in distributed systems.

Event-Driven Architecture

Subscribe to ledger events via webhooks or streaming APIs. Downstream systems receive notifications as transactions occur, enabling real-time dashboards, alerts, and integrations without polling.

Immutable History

Every transaction is recorded as an immutable event. Query historical balances at any point in time for audit purposes, dispute resolution, or analytical queries. History is never lost or overwritten.

Horizontal Scalability

NAYA's architecture scales horizontally to handle increasing transaction volume. Add capacity without re-architecting your application or accepting performance degradation.

How It Works

1. Define Your Account Structure: Create accounts that map to your business model: user accounts, merchant accounts, fee accounts, reserve accounts, and any custom structures. The flexible schema adapts to your needs.

2. Post Transactions in Real-Time: As financial events occur in your application, post the corresponding ledger entries through the API. NAYA validates, processes, and confirms each transaction in milliseconds.

3. Query Current and Historical State: Use the API to retrieve current balances for user-facing displays and historical data for reporting. The Data Hub provides optimized access patterns for different query types.

4. Integrate with Downstream Systems: Configure webhooks or streaming subscriptions to push ledger events to analytics, reconciliation, and accounting systems in real-time.

Key Benefits

• Instant User Experience: Users see accurate balances immediately after transactions, building trust and reducing support inquiries.
• Strong Consistency: No "eventual consistency" surprises. Balances are always accurate across all queries.
• Developer Productivity: Standard REST API with clear documentation accelerates integration and reduces development time.
• Operational Visibility: Real-time dashboards and alerts enable proactive monitoring of financial operations.
• Scalable Architecture: Handle growth from thousands to millions of transactions without architectural changes.
• Audit-Ready: Complete, immutable transaction history satisfies auditor and regulatory requirements.

Compliance & Reporting

Financial applications face regulatory requirements that NAYA's real-time architecture supports:

• SOC 2 Compliance: Immutable records, access controls, and audit trails support certification requirements.
• Regulatory Reporting: Real-time data availability enables timely generation of required regulatory reports.
• Dispute Resolution: Historical balance queries at any point in time support customer dispute investigation.
• Financial Audits: Complete transaction lineage provides auditors with the evidence they need.

Integration Architecture

NAYA's Real-Time Ledger API integrates with your application ecosystem:

• Application Backend: Post transactions from your application servers via REST API or SDKs.
• Payment Processors: Receive webhooks from Stripe, Adyen, Plaid, and others; post corresponding ledger entries.
• User Interfaces: Query balances and transaction history to power mobile apps, web dashboards, and account statements.
• Analytics Platforms: Stream ledger events to data warehouses for business intelligence and reporting.
• Accounting Systems: Push summarized or detailed journal entries to your general ledger.

API Example

Query a real-time balance:

GET /v1/accounts/acc_12345/balance

Response:

{
  "account_id": "acc_12345",
  "balance": {
    "available": 150000,
    "pending": 25000,
    "currency": "USD"
  },
  "as_of": "2024-01-15T14:30:22.456Z"
}

The balance reflects all transactions processed up to the as_of timestamp, providing a consistent, point-in-time view suitable for display or downstream processing.

Related Resources

• Embedded Payments Ledger – Infrastructure for payment platforms
• Developer Documentation – API reference and guides
• ROI Calculator – Calculate your infrastructure savings

Book a Demo