Ctrl+Shifter Podcast

EP 11: API-First Strategy - The Key to Scalable and Agile Digital Banking

OCTOBER 7, 2025

In this episode, Muthiah Sivalingam, Head of Product at audax, explains how an API-first strategy is helping traditional banks reinvent themselves in today’s digital-first world. With over 20 years of experience in banking, Muthiah shares how audax empowers financial institutions to modernize, scale, and quickly adapt to the ever-changing demands of consumers and businesses.

Timestamp

00:00 Introduction

01:42 – How audax Fills the Fintech Innovation Gap

04:33 – From Pain Points to Priorities: Lessons from SC Ventures

08:36 – audax’s Approach to Scalable, API-First Banking Across Markets

12:35 – Breaking the Legacy Barrier: Reinventing Banking through Modernisation

19:29 – What’s Next for BFSI in Southeast Asia?

26:27 – How to Build High-Performing Product Teams That Ship and Scale

29:42 – What Do Legacy Banks Risk if They Don’t Act Fast?

Innovation doesn’t mean instability. We can solve for stability and at the same time, banks are able to innovate and move forward.

About Our Guest Speaker

Muthiah Sivalingam

Head of Product at audax

Muthiah has over 20 years of experience in digital banking, starting his career at Standard Chartered, where he led digital transformation and embedded finance initiatives. After helping launch banking solutions across multiple regions, he joined audax to drive product innovation and help financial institutions modernize their systems with scalable, cloud-native solutions

audax is a plug-and-play digital banking platform that empowers banks and financial institutions to rapidly scale and modernise at speed. audax offers Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), digital banking, and embedded finance solutions, enabling seamless integration with existing systems to reduce operational complexity, accelerate time-to-market, and support scalable, compliant, and innovative banking services across Asia and the Middle East. By driving digital transformation, audax enables banks to create new revenue streams and serve underserved customer segments while supporting alternative digital banking business models.