API Builder 7 BETA3 not working properly -

I installed the 7-BETA3.jar file , created an app with a simple form, added the Manage API key menu in the userview, created an api key for basic authentication, base64 encoded the admin:passwordhere string and did the following using python requests as well as in postman

import requests

url = 'http://appcenterint.xrxdev.ca/jw/api/form/smallGetData/addWithFiles'

payload = {'language': '1',
'home_address': 'ca home',
'first_name': 'daniel.1',
'last_name': 'fung.1',
'dateModified': '',
'dateCreated': '',
'createdBy': '',
'id': '',
'modifiedBy': '',
'createdByName': '',
'modifiedByName': ''}
files = {'your_photo': open('C:/Users/myusernamehere/Documents/small-doc-sample1.pdf','rb')}

proxies = {"http":None, "https":None}

headers = {
  'api_id':'API-f255212a-2f0a-4b13-a453-7dc30a205b32'
  ,'api_key':'ce26291e29c743e09e2fb87cc87d2df3' 
  ,'Authorization':'*Basic YWRtaW46c21AbGxTcHJpbmc3MyE='
  ,'Content-Type': 'multipart/form-data'
  ,'accept':'application/json'}

# response = requests.request('POST', url, headers=headers, data=payload, files=files, proxies=proxies)
# response = requests.request('POST', url, headers=headers, data=payload, files=files, proxies=proxies)
response = requests.request('POST', url, headers=headers, proxies=proxies)

print(response.text.encode('utf8'))

I get the following error from the print above

'{"date":"Tue Nov 17 20:53:04 EST 2020","code":"401","message":"Authentication Failure"}'

i see the following in the Manage API Key Log

in the APP's Logs I see the following

INFO 17 Nov 2020 20:19:43 org.joget.api.service.ApiBuilder - Authentication for user admin (10.11.6.55) : true
3839
ERROR 17 Nov 2020 20:19:43 org.joget.plugin.property.service.PropertyUtil - A JSONObject text must begin with '{' at character 0
3840
org.json.JSONException: A JSONObject text must begin with '{' at character 0
3841
    at org.json.JSONTokener.syntaxError(JSONTokener.java:496)
3842
    at org.json.JSONObject.<init>(JSONObject.java:180)
3843
    at org.json.JSONObject.<init>(JSONObject.java:403)
3844
    at org.joget.plugin.property.service.PropertyUtil.getPropertiesValueFromJson(PropertyUtil.java:140)
3845
    at org.joget.api.service.ApiBuilder.authenticate(ApiBuilder.java:893)
3846
    at org.joget.api.service.ApiBuilder.serveApi(ApiBuilder.java:711) ....

I tried this using POSTMAN, Visual Studio Code WIth Python Requests ( from 2 different servers) and all of them error out the same way.

I have API Domain and API IP whitelists both set to *