Turning Partnerships Into a Living AI Ecosystem

At Q2, we’re building a world where AI, data, and open APIs work together to create smarter, more connected banking experiences. A glimpse of that future came to life through a demonstration at Dev Days 2025 that showed how fintech partner data and Q2 data can flow together to power an agentic ecosystem.

It’s a simple concept with massive potential: By securely sharing insights in both directions, financial institutions, partners, and Q2 can all become smarter.

Why it matters

Financial institutions sit at the center of extensive data, but much of it remains underused, isolated within systems that don’t communicate. That limits personalization, slows innovation, and prevents institutions from fully understanding account holder needs.

Meanwhile, fintechs collect rich behavioral data—such as engagement signals, invoice details, and travel patterns—that could enhance banking intelligence if combined responsibly with FI data.

By securely connecting these data streams through APIs, Q2 and our fintech partners will break down silos and create a continuous learning loop. The result is a smarter, adaptive ecosystem where every participant benefits.

This shift lays the groundwork for something bigger: an environment where AI agents can act on shared intelligence to create personalized, proactive, and trustworthy banking experiences.

How it works

The Q2 Digital Banking Platform exposes structured account holder data through its Audience API, which defines and segments account holders based on behavioral and transactional attributes. In the prototype, that API is opened to a trusted partner application, allowing that partner to access relevant, permissioned data sets that describe who a financial institution wants to reach. You can imagine examples like customers with a maturing CD or members who recently opened new accounts.

The partner, in turn, uses that data to tune and tailor the functionality and execution of its products. But this connection isn’t one-directional. Using a complementary API, the partner sends new contextual data, such as engagement signals or behavioral insights, back to Q2.

This creates a reinforcement loop where both systems continuously refine their understanding of account holder behavior. Each side of the connection becomes smarter without additional configuration or manual data entry.

The technical backbone of this loop is built on event exchange and metadata mapping. Each time data is exchanged, Q2’s platform records and translates partner-generated signals into audience traits within its personalization engine. For instance, “mobile engagement frequency” or “travel patterns” might become new dynamic traits that can be used to segment audiences or trigger targeted messaging.

Over time, this flow creates a shared intelligence graph—a constantly updating web of traits and actions that reflect how account holders behave across multiple connected experiences .

As more fintechs connect through this API framework, each contributes its own specialized data and functions. Together, these become the ingredients that future AI agents will need to operate effectively: a unified set of APIs, a secure foundation of trusted financial data, and a common context for understanding intent.

In the Dev Days 2025 demo, Q2 CTO Adam Blue shared how this fintech integration illustrates the early steps toward Q2’s agentic ecosystem. “It’s the first time you can see our partners and Q2 literally learning from each other in real time,” he said.

In the future, an AI agent built on this ecosystem wouldn’t have to start from scratch. It would already “know” how the financial institution’s data, partners, and customer relationships fit together. Instead of asking for data, it could act on it—building, suggesting, and optimizing in real time.

Just as important as the technology itself is the governance model behind it. The prototype leverages Q2’s secure data permissions framework, ensuring that all exchanges are fully auditable and that no partner or agent accesses data beyond what’s authorized. Every interaction is logged, controlled, and attributable, which is an essential safeguard for responsible AI enablement in financial services.

See it in action

The bigger picture

What begins with one fintech and the Audience API is the first step toward something transformative. As more partners join this shared data ecosystem, Q2’s platform becomes the connective tissue of an entire financial intelligence network.

For financial institutions, that means:

•    Smarter personalization for every account holder
•    Richer insights without additional complexity
•    A foundation for future AI agents that can act safely and autonomously

And for Q2’s partners and developers, it means a growing marketplace of interoperable APIs, data, and capabilities all working together through trust, transparency, and shared value.

As Blue put it, “When you give agents access to a shared foundation of secure, auditable data and APIs, they can do remarkable things—personalize every experience, anticipate needs, and connect people to the right products at the right time.”

Ready to explore more AI innovation?

An agentic ecosystem is a critical part of the larger story of how Q2 is using AI, data, and openness to push the boundaries of what’s possible in digital banking.

See more of what we’re building for the future of AI in financial services. Learn more.