API integration means connecting two systems so they exchange data programmatically — a booking platform pulling rates, a bank pushing payment status, a customs broker receiving declarations — rather than through files or manual entry. It is loose commercial vocabulary: nothing says what counts as integrated, and vendors use the phrase for anything from a documented interface with guaranteed availability to a one-off data export. The questions that matter are contractual rather than technical. What is the interface guaranteed to do; what happens when it changes or breaks; who owns and may reuse the data crossing it; what uptime and latency are actually committed; how much notice before a version is deprecated. A commitment to “API integration” with none of that specified is not a commitment.
Why this entry carries no source list. This lexicon cites an official primary source wherever one exists and says so plainly where none does. This term is market convention: it was coined by commercial practice, it is used by everyone in the trade, and no body defines it. Pointing at a carrier’s tariff, a bank’s product page or a trade association’s explainer would dress one participant’s usage as a general rule. The practical upshot runs through the paragraph above — where the word carries no fixed meaning, the contract has to supply one.