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Root partners with Standard Bank South Africa to offer programmable bank account

iafrikan.com

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Re: Root partners with Standard Bank South Africa to offer programmable bank account

#41
post #35
post #5

Founder here - let me know if you have any questions! More details at https://root.co.za/

Hi malanj, Can you point on some use cases this may serve? Is the intention to allow mobile app developers to create e-wallet type apps. for the bank account? Or perhaps hook it up to e-assisstant such as Alexa?

We've actually done an Amazon Echo integration :-) So you can do things like check balance, or send money to a predefined set of contacts etc.

A lot of the use-cases getting interest seem to be related to spending management. E.g. company cards for everyone in a team that integrates with Slack. So when you spend on the card it notifies you, and asks you to submit the payment receipt directly on Slack.

Re: Root partners with Standard Bank South Africa to offer programmable bank account

#42
post #27

Great idea, really like it. I really wonder why our overpaid German fintech ecosystem is unable to produce this kind of innovation? Is it because of too many regulations within the EU?

You mean why N26 doesn't do that already ?

Re: Root partners with Standard Bank South Africa to offer programmable bank account

#43
post #22
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but account owner or user will be able to give permission for access to his banking data. So you will be able to use your fav accounting app to fetch data directly from account without doing csv export or hacking something around.

In Germany we have DATEV, which is a company doing exacly that.

In France we have "Bankin" and other apps, but the problem is, since banks don't offer APIs at all, all these apps (called "Aggregators" in fintech language) are doing web scraping to pull the user datas.

Re: Root partners with Standard Bank South Africa to offer programmable bank account

#44
post #39

I would love something like this for personal use, so I can share my bank account with my family and control their spending and behavior. I mean, assuming you can give out cards linked to said account, to discern who is using the account. That'd be incredibly useful. I used Google Wallet for this previously, and now use Simple, but it'd be nice to not have to approve requests and instead implement some logic to do so…

That'll actually be one of the key use-cases for Root I think. E.g. We've had people who want a card for their spouse, and then whenever one of them spends money, it alerts the other one so that they can sync budgets.

That's awesome! I just wish I could use Root then, with a state-side available bank.

Re: Root partners with Standard Bank South Africa to offer programmable bank account

#45
post #41
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi malanj, Can you point on some use cases this may serve? Is the intention to allow mobile app developers to create e-wallet type apps. for the bank account? Or perhaps hook it up to e-assisstant such as Alexa?

We've actually done an Amazon Echo integration :-) So you can do things like check balance, or send money to a predefined set of contacts etc. A lot of the use-cases getting interest seem to be related to spending management. E.g. company cards for everyone in a team that integrates with Slack. So when you spend on the card it notifies you, and asks you to submit the payment receipt directly on Slack.

- Hey, Echo, send two thousand rand to Mike

- Ok, sending twenty thousand rand to Mike

- Noooooooo! Two thousand

- Ok, also sending twenty thousand to Nolan

Re: Root partners with Standard Bank South Africa to offer programmable bank account

#46
This is an awesome idea. The only thing I log in to my account is to literally run this in my head a couple of times a month. I usually have a couple of active credit cards with different due dates on them so this is at least annoying to keep track of.

    safe_margin = rent + food + 500
    emergency_fund_bal = monthly_salary * 3

    // pay all credit cards if I can
    sort(my_credit_cards, apr) 
    for (cc in my_credit_cards) {
      if (cc.statement_bal == 0 || cc.paid) skip
      if (checking.bal - cc.statement_bal - safe_margin >= 0) {
        pay(to=cc, from=checking, amount=cc.statement_bal);
        cc.paid = 1
      } else if (checking.balance > cc.min_pay)  {
        pay(to=cc, from=checking, amount=cc.min_pay)
      }
    }

    // refill the emergency funds if needed and can
    if (savings.bal  safe_margin) {
      transfer(from=checking, to=checking, 
        amount=min(
          emergency_fund_bal - savings.bal, 
          checking.bal - safe_margin)
       )
    }

    // invest the rest
    if (checking.bal > safe_margin) {
      invest(checking.bal - safe_margin)
    }

Re: Root partners with Standard Bank South Africa to offer programmable bank account

#47
post #46

This is an awesome idea. The only thing I log in to my account is to literally run this in my head a couple of times a month. I usually have a couple of active credit cards with different due dates on them so this is at least annoying to keep track of. safe_margin = rent + food + 500 emergency_fund_bal = monthly_salary * 3 // pay all credit cards if I can sort(my_credit_cards, apr) for (cc in my_credit_cards) { if (c…

Glad I'm not the only one that'd be happy to have a proper api for their bank.

In Europe to upcoming PSD2 directive basically requires banks to expose the api. In the mean time I'm abusing JSON/HTTP api my bank has built for their own RWD app...

Re: Root partners with Standard Bank South Africa to offer programmable bank account

#50
post #42
post #27

Great idea, really like it. I really wonder why our overpaid German fintech ecosystem is unable to produce this kind of innovation? Is it because of too many regulations within the EU?

You mean why N26 doesn't do that already ?

Yes, now that N26 is a bank they could allow us to create artificial IBAN and CC numbers so every one of my amazon/netflix accounts has their unique payment details.

Apart from N26 and Wirecard most German fintech is bullshit talkers.

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