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Root – Programmable bank account for software developers

root.co.za

301–310 of 427 posts

Re: Root – Programmable bank account for software developers

#301

At first I was wondering what I could possibly use this for, but as I sat and thought about it, I realized the possibilities are enormous. I'd like to know if the following are possible: 1. Forcing me to stay on budget, unless there's an emergency (perhaps allow purchases over budget after the third attempt). 2. Automatically distribute paychecks or other income into different accounts (some to retirement, some to sa…

5. Due to a bug in _your_ code, accidentally have your mortgage payments bounce because of lack of funds, and get evicted from your home. With great power comes great responsibility. The number of times you say 'perhaps', 'unless', 'so if', or 'could' is so high that you would have to thoroughly review your code before trusting it.

Maybe don't use this for paying mortgage or anything high risk?

Re: Root – Programmable bank account for software developers

#302

At first I was wondering what I could possibly use this for, but as I sat and thought about it, I realized the possibilities are enormous. I'd like to know if the following are possible: 1. Forcing me to stay on budget, unless there's an emergency (perhaps allow purchases over budget after the third attempt). 2. Automatically distribute paychecks or other income into different accounts (some to retirement, some to sa…

5. Due to a bug in _your_ code, accidentally have your mortgage payments bounce because of lack of funds, and get evicted from your home. With great power comes great responsibility. The number of times you say 'perhaps', 'unless', 'so if', or 'could' is so high that you would have to thoroughly review your code before trusting it.

Mate it's called a sandbox and reviewed apps... We're not talking about hooking up some PHP script to your bank account... and I'm not even affiliated with them!

Re: Root – Programmable bank account for software developers

#304

At first I was wondering what I could possibly use this for, but as I sat and thought about it, I realized the possibilities are enormous. I'd like to know if the following are possible: 1. Forcing me to stay on budget, unless there's an emergency (perhaps allow purchases over budget after the third attempt). 2. Automatically distribute paychecks or other income into different accounts (some to retirement, some to sa…

Yes, the homepage is really uninformative.

Re: Root – Programmable bank account for software developers

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to think that in time someone will solve this too by some kind of clever obfuscation, but it's not going to be BoA doing it. It's going to be someone who wants to fuck with their status as a state-sponsored usurer. Or at least I hope. Also consider Bitcoin as a "cashless society" alternative to the financial panopticon - no one's looking over your shoulder there and it's definitely not "cash".

I'm skeptical about Bitcoin as a potential alternative because I suspect that, if you combine the surveillance abilities of the state and the money of the state with the time and effort of the very many clever people who work for the state, Bitcoin will become substantially less anonymous.

Usually traceable unless you use a tumbler to "clean" your coins, even then it's still traceable I think

Re: Root – Programmable bank account for software developers

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you thought about using a headless browser or web scraping?

A friend of mine did this but after two times web access being disabled for his account because "suspicious activity" he stopped. Second time he actually tried very hard to simulate a human with delays, user-agent, browser capabilities and so on but didn't help.

This is getting harder and harder. Chrome allows you to do a .click but it also sends a tainted flag. I'm not sure if headless browses also send non-tainted events.

Re: Root – Programmable bank account for software developers

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is support for Barclays in the pipeline?

Barclays has already been integrated. We temporarily took the integration offline in good faith, pending commercial negotiations with them. Sadly, this seems like it was a ruse to buy themselves time to make changes to the app that break the integration. Their app is the most hardened app I've ever seen and it's challenging to reverse, but it's in progress. Don't worry, it will be back soon. :)

Using undocumented APIs that are able to be changed on a whim doesn't seem like something I would want to trust my finances too. This is not meant in a bad way it just seems a bit too risky for me to trust moving my money about with. I am glad you are doing something though, the state of banking access is atrocious.

Re: Root – Programmable bank account for software developers

#308
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could just have the ability to create virtual credit card numbers. I would be able to fill it with a certain balance, set up recurring balance refills, change the expiration date, keep a merchant whitelist, and cancel the number at any time. This gives me the opportunity to make sure that even if my card number was stolen or abused, the charge won't go through. If I sign up for a free trial or a service I on…

Most of this is already available: https://www.bankofamerica.com/privacy/accounts-cards/shopsaf...

Still allows through recurring payments though

Re: Root – Programmable bank account for software developers

#309
post #297
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could just have the ability to create virtual credit card numbers. I would be able to fill it with a certain balance, set up recurring balance refills, change the expiration date, keep a merchant whitelist, and cancel the number at any time. This gives me the opportunity to make sure that even if my card number was stolen or abused, the charge won't go through. If I sign up for a free trial or a service I on…

Check out privacy.com

Privacy.com is awesome! I use it for most all of my transactions which I can't use PayPal for.

Re: Root – Programmable bank account for software developers

#310
Very interesting concept... this kind of accessibility opens a lot of possibilities

For example: simple things like better tracking my budgets or pulling transaction history. I have a pain doing that from my banks who gives me PDF or only goes back 6 months of data

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