Show HN: We open sourced a $50M neobank

#1

Post by garyhtou » Sat, Mar 29, 2025, 11:48 PM UTC

Open sourcing our neobank for nonprofits has been years in the making. We shared our initial launch here back in 2019 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19257241). Today, I’m happy to announce that our Ruby on Rails codebase is public on GitHub!

Show HN: We open sourced a $50M neobank
hackclub.com

Re: Show HN: We open sourced a $50M neobank

#2

Post by Agreed3750 » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 12:01 AM UTC

Great stuff, just wondering how fast there will be a major security hole. Has HCB been audited by any third party security vendors yet?

Re: Show HN: We open sourced a $50M neobank

#3

Post by sampoder » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 12:05 AM UTC

Agreed3750 wrote: post #2

Great stuff, just wondering how fast there will be a major security hole. Has HCB been audited by any third party security vendors yet?

Yes - we've worked with a third party security advisors to make this happen!

If this stuff does interest you or anyone else here, we'd always welcome advice / support. I had some great conversations with folks over the summer embarking on this project. sam [at] hackclub [dot] com if anyone is interested.

Also, FYI for anyone: https://github.com/hackclub/hcb/blob/main/SECURITY.md

Re: Show HN: We open sourced a $50M neobank

#4

Post by davidajackson » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 4:17 AM UTC

That's cool. What's your motivation here? Just to build cool stuff, or is this a business? No agenda just wondering.

Re: Show HN: We open sourced a $50M neobank

#5

Post by garyhtou » Sun, Mar 30, 2025, 5:14 AM UTC

davidajackson wrote: post #4

That's cool. What's your motivation here? Just to build cool stuff, or is this a business? No agenda just wondering.

Thanks! We started as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on after-school programming clubs and high school hackathons. We were working with high schoolers across the country and noticed that teenagers lacked the necessary financial infrastructure to run in-person events. For example, receiving money from a sponsor to buy pizza. We built HCB to give them essential tools like a donation page, invoicing system, and debit cards.

Since then, it's grown to a platform that supports not only high school hackathons, but nearly any nonprofit-related mission, including robotic teams and local food banks. We're still an educational nonprofit centered around high school coding clubs, but HCB is a tool we maintain to better empower these high schoolers.