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Teller – API for your bank account

blog.teller.io

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Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#11

Post by Animats »

sjtgraham wrote: post #8
Animats wrote: post #6

Not seeing terms of service or a privacy policy. Who's responsible when there's an error, or a transaction is processed twice or zero times? Is this really a scheme to obtain user data and sell it to advertisers?

Founder here. First of all, I'm honored the legendary John Nagle now knows about my startup! :) Privacy policy and terms are linked to from https://teller.io/developer/beta Privacy policy: https://teller.io/developer/privacy Terms: https://teller.io/developer/terms Payments APIs will be signed by the developer's private key (See more about that our auth scheme here https://blog.teller.io/2016/04/26/tauth.html ) and t…

Your terms:

"We are not liable for any loss or damage that may result from your use of our services. This includes any direct, indirect, or consequential losses; any loss or damage caused by tort, including negligence, breach of contract or otherwise."

You don't get taken seriously in the financial space with terms like that. You need to accept responsibility for errors and carry errors and omissions insurance.

Compare Bank of America Bill Pay service terms:

When you make a bill payment using Online or Mobile Banking you can be confident that it will be processed correctly. In the unlikely event that we fail to process your payment in accordance to the payee, amount and date you specified, Bank of America will reimburse you for any late-payment-related charges incurred.

We are committed to keeping your financial information safe and making sure you can bank with us securely, which is why you are not liable for fraudulent transfers or bill pay transactions made via online or mobile when they are reported promptly.[1]

[1] https://www.bankofamerica.com/onlinebanking/online-banking-s...

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#14

Post by alexbilbie »

UK banks don't accept any liability if you give your online banking credentials to a third party.

If some fraud was to come about as a result of someone using Teller then they would be out of pocket or has Teller got agreements with the compatible banks to overcome this situation (either by Teller reimbursing the customer or the bank)?

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#15

Post by sjtgraham »

lookingfj wrote: post #9

How does it work if not by screen scraping?

It works by using the same private APIs that the bank's own mobile app. We reverse engineer their app, work out the API contract, implement our client, and normalize the data.

Reverse engineering mobile APIs is a superior strategy to screen-scraping because:

- they already return structured data

- the security model for that channel is different, e.g. no need for 2FA all the time so truly unattended use cases are possible

- it's much more difficult for banks to make breaking changes. When banks do make a breaking change the old version is supported for a decent amount of time to allow their own banking app users to upgrade, we can take advantage of this window to provide a consistent level of service.

Finally, we often don't need user credentials. If there is an option to authenticate with another mechanism during registration, e.g. EMV CAP (A.K.A Barclays PINSentry etc) we use that.

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#16

Post by jameskegel »

Animats wrote: post #11
sjtgraham wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Founder here. First of all, I'm honored the legendary John Nagle now knows about my startup! :) Privacy policy and terms are linked to from https://teller.io/developer/beta Privacy policy: https://teller.io/developer/privacy Terms: https://teller.io/developer/terms Payments APIs will be signed by the developer's private key (See more about that our auth scheme here https://blog.teller.io/2016/04/26/tauth.html ) and t…

Your terms: "We are not liable for any loss or damage that may result from your use of our services. This includes any direct, indirect, or consequential losses; any loss or damage caused by tort, including negligence, breach of contract or otherwise." You don't get taken seriously in the financial space with terms like that. You need to accept responsibility for errors and carry errors and omissions insurance. Compa…

You're not wrong; but please don't ignore OP's excitement to garner your attention, those things matter to little people like us in a socially conscious culture of 2017.

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#18

Post by martinald »

amb23 wrote: post #12
lookingfj wrote: post #9

How does it work if not by screen scraping?

I'd assume they're taking advantage of the Open API laws for financial institutions in Europe. The US is a long ways away from having this.

It uses the internal APIs mobile banks use afiak. For what it's worth the open API laws aren't in power yet in Europe and tbh I imagine nearly all banks will fail to implement by the deadline. Or if they do, the APIs will be fairly crippled.

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#20

Post by clappski »

sjtgraham wrote: post #15
lookingfj wrote: post #9

How does it work if not by screen scraping?

It works by using the same private APIs that the bank's own mobile app. We reverse engineer their app, work out the API contract, implement our client, and normalize the data. Reverse engineering mobile APIs is a superior strategy to screen-scraping because: - they already return structured data - the security model for that channel is different, e.g. no need for 2FA all the time so truly unattended use cases are pos…

This all sounds like it could potentially be illegal, have you spoken to a lawyer and cleared it all?
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