BBVA has public APIs in the US and Spain -https://www.bbvaapimarket.com/ More APIs are coming too.
Ask HN: Is there any US bank with a sandbox or API?
51–60 of 61 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is there any US bank with a sandbox or API?
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The chances you will get approval from banks and regulators are zero. To have a halfway decent shot, you would need years, significant industry connections, expensive lawyers on retainer in New York and Washington, and the ability to prove you have cash on hand in the high 7 figures. Full disclosure, I work for Capital One now. So... C1 has stated publicly it's interested in this space and some of its prominent emp…
heartily agree with "give most of your profits to" Even though Plaid comes up a lot in these conversation, I haven't found their pricing any better or startup friendly than any other provider (fincity, yodlee etc). Better marketing yes. Better api? Meh. Anyway, I see the current set of financial data aggregators being fine for market validation for some type of applications, but they are too expensive to allow for wi…
Plaid has callback support and good latency. While I appreciate and have worked with Intuit for a long time, it's difficult not to say plaid has the edge in a modern API design.
The current aggregators are optimized for big businesses and venture backed startups. I used them to sell a startup to capital one, and I named other people doing the same.
You just need to think very long and very hard about your business model.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any US bank with a sandbox or API?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The chances you will get approval from banks and regulators are zero. To have a halfway decent shot, you would need years, significant industry connections, expensive lawyers on retainer in New York and Washington, and the ability to prove you have cash on hand in the high 7 figures. Full disclosure, I work for Capital One now. So... C1 has stated publicly it's interested in this space and some of its prominent emp…
heartily agree with "give most of your profits to" Even though Plaid comes up a lot in these conversation, I haven't found their pricing any better or startup friendly than any other provider (fincity, yodlee etc). Better marketing yes. Better api? Meh. Anyway, I see the current set of financial data aggregators being fine for market validation for some type of applications, but they are too expensive to allow for wi…
Has Plaid changed their pricing model significantly over the past year?
The way Plaid structures (structured?) their pricing is much friendlier than Yodlee in that there are no monthly minimums, setup costs, or term commitments. Simple volume based pricing is generally much more startup friendly, at least in the initial stages.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any US bank with a sandbox or API?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
heartily agree with "give most of your profits to" Even though Plaid comes up a lot in these conversation, I haven't found their pricing any better or startup friendly than any other provider (fincity, yodlee etc). Better marketing yes. Better api? Meh. Anyway, I see the current set of financial data aggregators being fine for market validation for some type of applications, but they are too expensive to allow for wi…
Has Plaid changed their pricing model significantly over the past year? The way Plaid structures (structured?) their pricing is much friendlier than Yodlee in that there are no monthly minimums, setup costs, or term commitments. Simple volume based pricing is generally much more startup friendly, at least in the initial stages.
They have a $500/mo minimum, last I asked (a few months ago.)
Re: Ask HN: Is there any US bank with a sandbox or API?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The chances you will get approval from banks and regulators are zero. To have a halfway decent shot, you would need years, significant industry connections, expensive lawyers on retainer in New York and Washington, and the ability to prove you have cash on hand in the high 7 figures. Full disclosure, I work for Capital One now. So... C1 has stated publicly it's interested in this space and some of its prominent emp…
heartily agree with "give most of your profits to" Even though Plaid comes up a lot in these conversation, I haven't found their pricing any better or startup friendly than any other provider (fincity, yodlee etc). Better marketing yes. Better api? Meh. Anyway, I see the current set of financial data aggregators being fine for market validation for some type of applications, but they are too expensive to allow for wi…
Heyo! Charley from Plaid here, feel free to message me directly at charley@plaid.com, we want to make sure our pricing is startup friendly :)
Re: Ask HN: Is there any US bank with a sandbox or API?
#56Capital One provides this toy API: http://api.reimaginebanking.com If you want to create an app or startup that does anything involving banking, look elsewhere. The chances you will get approval from banks and regulators are zero. To have a halfway decent shot, you would need years, significant industry connections, expensive lawyers on retainer in New York and Washington, and the ability to prove you have cash on ha…
> The chances you will get approval from banks and regulators are zero. To have a halfway decent shot, you would need years, significant industry connections, expensive lawyers on retainer in New York and Washington, and the ability to prove you have cash on hand in the high 7 figures. Full disclosure, I work for Capital One now. So... C1 has stated publicly it's interested in this space and some of its prominent emp…
Totally agree. Would have upvoted this twice if possible.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any US bank with a sandbox or API?
#57This is a marvelous thread! - I'll read it more carefully, but from a glance it looks like most of the functional links are the right ones... I'll speak more to the theory.
I've recommended that every Bank I've done work for (which is quite a few) consider an external facing API to enable Lead User Behavior (see Von Hippel et al from MIT and MIT Press) and the concept has never gotten good air, for a variety of reasons which, no doubt, make sense to the their reference business models. Much of that can be explained be the theories of Disruptive Innovation (see Clay Christensen, et al, Harvard Business Press).
While I can't speak on this front, I think it's also acknowledged by anyone with a fully functioning brain stem that the various screen scraping solutions are sketchy for all concerned. There are some stable providers (Plaid seems pretty shiney and exciting. Fiserv and Yodalee have been around, and I'd only say that one of them seems yo have more clout than the other.
I think you'll see some exciting possibilities in the not too distant future, but I'd have trouble seeing a major Bank opening their doors to the public for all the reasons mentioned here. If the theories of disruptive innovation hold water, I'd say that once robust services come available that allow smart developers to apply modern thought to services, the disintermediation will be annoying to the big Banks if it strips away their best customers, which it's not likely to.
The problem (from the theory side) is a) there's not much money in providing a service, there's money in selling accounts, and that's where it's really hard for a small player to gain entry and b) in a battle where the incumbent is motivated to fight, that incumbent will likely win, and I personally don't want to fight with an incumbent who makes 5BB a quarter.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any US bank with a sandbox or API?
#58100% agree, but there are some exciting banks out there doing innovative things (e.g. BBVA, Santandar, US Bank, Fidor, Silicon Valley Bank). There future of Open Banking is coming... It's just not here yet and I wouldn't hold your breath.
In the meantime...
Work at Dwolla. What us and others, like Plaid, have done is taken these partnerships, resources, compliance requirements, etc. and smashed them into endpoints, creating [hopefully] something you're looking for. Our White Label and co-branded APIs (https://developers.dwolla.com/). A quick list.
Create Bank Transfers - Yes Know Your Customer Verification - Yes Sandbox - Yes Bank account verification - Yes Webhooks - Yes Oauth - Yes (Co-branded only) Create Customer Records - Yes (White Label only)
Reach out to Spencer@Dwolla.com, if you think we can help to. (While we don't work directly with Plaid, we can be complimentary).
Re: Ask HN: Is there any US bank with a sandbox or API?
#59Banks suck at APIs (even if one exists). If you are trying to move money between bank accounts, you can checkout https://checkbook.io, they have a white label, token based API to create bank transactions.
Re: Ask HN: Is there any US bank with a sandbox or API?
#60What about Geltbox Money? it doesn't use any third party Aggregation site (the user can aggregate his own data without exposing private data to any third parties /web site.
It is a new way of aggregating data privately.