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Teller – API for your bank account

blog.teller.io

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Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#71

Post by JohnnyMneunomic »

rufugee wrote: post #43
JohnnyMneunomic wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or any different from Quovo ( https://www.quovo.com/ ) if you were pulling both bank data and brokerage data?

First I've heard about Plaid and Quovo. These services seem to be targeted at a developer interested in developing products for others. I really wish someone would come out with an API service targeted towards someone who would like to manage and query their portfolio of accounts with code. I have tried time and time again to use things like Mint or Quicken to have a consolidated view of my accounts, but invariably I…

Would you pay for access to this API service?

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#72

Post by duiker101 »

sparkling wrote: post #53
foxylion wrote: post #22

As a German it is hard to believe that such things do not exist yet in other countries. We have a standardized protocol called FinTS which is implemented by most banks. This results in a huge amount of desktop and mobile applications for banking.

FinTS (formerly known as HBCI) is horrible and serves as a great example of how not to design a API. The non-machine-readable german-language-only API specification consist of >800 pages spread across various PDFs[1] full of gibberish. There are no official client libraries, no minimal examples, different banks only support certain versions etc. etc. etc. [1] https://www.hbci-zka.de/dokumente/spezifikation_deutsch/fi…

That sounds like a standard enterprise implementation.

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#73

Post by whitepoplar »

heneryville wrote: post #56

"We realise that our revenue will most likely be a very long tail with a small number of customers bringing in most of the cash." Either they or I don't understand what long tail means.

Long tail doesn't necessarily mean that the tail makes up most of the distribution. A long tail can make up a majority, or minority, of the total distribution.

E.g. 80% of revenue coming from 1,000 customers. 20% of revenue coming from 100,000 customers

or

20% of revenue coming from 1,000 customers. 80% revenue coming from 100,000 customers.

The latter is more fat-tailed.

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#77

Post by chrisallenlane »

Spivak wrote: post #34
Alupis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or potentially broken easily - since these are private API's that the bank is free to change whenever they feel like it.

Not without pushing out an update to all of their clients. Which presumably they would know about.

It seems like they would only find out after the update has been pushed, though - ie, after the app has been broken.

Unless they have relationships with the banks now, and would be given a heads-up. Perhaps that's the case. It sounds like it may be.

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#78

Post by Alupis »

Spivak wrote: post #34
Alupis wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or potentially broken easily - since these are private API's that the bank is free to change whenever they feel like it.

Not without pushing out an update to all of their clients. Which presumably they would know about.

Sure they might find out an App Update was issued in the App Store... but they cannot possibly know what API changes were made without reverse-engineering the API's all over again.

Not to mention, once they discover what changed, now this service has to go make the changes on their system... meanwhile that bank doesn't work with this service anymore.

So the App is broken for some undefined period of time.

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#79

Post by meredydd »

sjtgraham wrote: post #33
alexbilbie wrote: post #14

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)?

Hi, Firstly, we don't always need a credential. Some banks provide other auth mechanisms, e.g. EMV CAP. We use this for Barclays and Nationwide. Using Teller might not violate your bank's terms of service, which is why we advise you to read them in conjunction with ours. Furthermore, it is the view of some senior bank people that I speak to that PSD2 will make such clauses in banking terms illegal. It is also worth m…

This is startup-ese for "Every single one of our users is breaking their bank's ToS, and we maintain plausible deniability by telling them to go and read complex legal documents themselves".

I can totally understand the motivation (particularly with PSD2 around the corner, which will mandate banks to provide legit APIs - I'm guessing the plan is to grab market share before that happens). However, I am very skeptical of this approach when applied to finance. Any technical product whose risk profile is "break into us and steal money directly" is a really dangerous place to leave your users on the hook for liability.

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#80

Post by Spivak »

chrisallenlane wrote: post #77
Spivak wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not without pushing out an update to all of their clients. Which presumably they would know about.

It seems like they would only find out after the update has been pushed, though - ie, after the app has been broken. Unless they have relationships with the banks now, and would be given a heads-up. Perhaps that's the case. It sounds like it may be.

Sure, but they've got plenty of buffer time since their app doesn't break when the new version is released, it breaks when the old API is actually depreciated. Just because you release a new version on the App Store doesn't make clients with old versions of the app disappear.
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