API (Application Programming Interface)
A way for one program to ask another for data or actions and get a response back.
What is an API, and what does it do on a website or online store?
API stands for application programming interface. It is an agreement about how to request things from a system and what shape the answer comes back in. When your store creates a charge on a payment gateway or sends a confirmation email, it is doing that through that service's API.
Thanks to APIs, nobody has to build everything from scratch. A website can use maps, payments, email, or artificial intelligence from other companies and connect them to its own data.
Why it matters to your business
Almost everything a digital business does runs through APIs: charging cards, invoicing, sending emails, checking inventory, talking to a supplier. Knowing they exist helps you ask better questions before you hire someone, like whether your system will be able to connect tomorrow with your accounting software or with a partner's platform.
How we use this at Damorus
In URG Technology the store talks to Mercado Pago's API to charge customers and to Resend's API to send emails, and the keys for those connections are stored encrypted on the server, never traveling to the browser. The company is also working out an API connection with a computer brand to sell new equipment with no inventory of its own: the store lists it, and the brand ships it.
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