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How ACH works: A developer perspective (2014)

engineering.gusto.com

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Re: How ACH works: A developer perspective (2014)

#121

Post by martin_bech »

djsumdog wrote: post #95
mdip wrote: post #45

I noticed a few comments specifically referencing FTP (and who can blame them since the HN title as of this moment specifically references it). In the first post of the series, the author refers to the server as a "Secure FTP" server, which can be confusing to read[0]. In later parts (and a little googling of my own), it's clear that the server is actually an SFTP server, not a plain-old FTP server. It's still plenty…

My first job in 2005 was to take over an ACH processing system that was written for our company. It was all in Perl. :-P ACH format is super weird .. tons of lines with 99999 on them as separators. And yes, we had to go through a bank to do any ACH transactions. They shipped us a router that setup an IPSec tunnel and it had a backup ISDN connection on it as well. I wish ACH was more accessible. In many other countrie…

In Denmark its instant, as in realtime, as in you buy my user car, transfer money through your bank app, and see it instantly in my bank app.

Re: How ACH works: A developer perspective (2014)

#122

Post by joshribakoff »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #113
joshribakoff wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else do you suggest you standup a sftp that cannot leak data even if the password is compromised? I'm all ears. Node is a runtime by the way and huge in what regard? The Linux codebase is also large.

Seconding what kalleboo said, setting directory permissions has been a staple of file-sharing for decades. Setting up a node server to block read-access seems incredibly byzantine.

Good point but we also have to load balance this / have failover and provision users on the fly. I could have used messaging queues to provision PAM users on the whole cluster and this guy would have still complained because I used a non standard port. Not sure why that was a problem either but again we can't press back or question him. he would cancel the whole integration. Bottom line is our end user wanted real time data (presumably via an API)

Re: How ACH works: A developer perspective (2014)

#124

Post by Lazare »

fragsworth wrote: post #51
Lazare wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> banks could roll their own private "exchange" currency to do near real time transfers to any other bank If only US banks already had access to some sort of shared currency they could use for such transfers! Snark aside, this just seems like a horrible use for a crypto currency. Block chains are an interesting tool to solve a lack of trust when you're willing to give up some speed and convenience. Banks have full tr…

No bank has full trust of any other entity. It's not black and white. They use ratings (either Standard and Poor's or others) to determine the risk involved in a liability. Even the U.S. Government has a certain amount of risk.

> No bank has full trust of any other entity. It's not black and white.

For interbank transfers, it is. That's simply how the financial system works.

> They use ratings (either Standard and Poor's or others) to determine the risk involved in a liability.

No. The reason why your $50 ACH transfer to your cousin takes so long to clear isn't that recipient bank is checking Standard and Poor's to see if Wachovia is good for it.

Re: How ACH works: A developer perspective (2014)

#125

Post by jussij »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #92
rayiner wrote: post #65

In 20 years FTP will still be a thing and whatever JS/Ajax/RPC/WSDL/JSON thing kids are using these days will be as dead as CORBA.

SFTP isn't that old and shares nothing with FTP other than three letters.

SFTP is the FTP protocol running through a SSL socket where as FTP is the FTP protocol running through a plain old socket.

So they do have a lot in common.

Re: How ACH works: A developer perspective (2014)

#126

Post by photonios »

martin_bech wrote: post #121
djsumdog wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first job in 2005 was to take over an ACH processing system that was written for our company. It was all in Perl. :-P ACH format is super weird .. tons of lines with 99999 on them as separators. And yes, we had to go through a bank to do any ACH transactions. They shipped us a router that setup an IPSec tunnel and it had a backup ISDN connection on it as well. I wish ACH was more accessible. In many other countrie…

In Denmark its instant, as in realtime, as in you buy my user car, transfer money through your bank app, and see it instantly in my bank app.

Yeap, in the Netherlands as well. You can see the money being subtracted in almost real-time when you buy stuff in a store.

Re: How ACH works: A developer perspective (2014)

#127

Post by kpil »

geon wrote: post #109
geomark wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American expat living in a developing country it seems very weird to me how backwards the US ACH system is. Where I live now it's the same as the countries you mentioned, anyone can send money to your bank account using just the account number. And it appears in minutes. The banks even offer you an SMS alert when founds arrive and the sender can elect to send an SMS to alert the receiver to check their account…

Swish in Sweden?

Swish allows to send using an arbitrary number (phone or arbitrarily assigned) rather than an actual account number.

It's also credits the recipient immediately. That's possible since all the participating banks have deposited a number of billions in a mutual fund designed to cover the losses in the case one of the banks runs out of money, and also probably by having an internal account to debit during the day.

They are tranfering money between the banks at one (or maybe a few) standard clearing runs involving the Riksbank, that works more or less like ACH. I think all of them are scheduled in the morning.

All Swedish banks are working onreplacing the payment infrastructure (the clearing. ) It's supposed to be finished in 2024 or something like that.

Re: How ACH works: A developer perspective (2014)

#128

Post by diroussel »

kennydude wrote: post #112
djsumdog wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first job in 2005 was to take over an ACH processing system that was written for our company. It was all in Perl. :-P ACH format is super weird .. tons of lines with 99999 on them as separators. And yes, we had to go through a bank to do any ACH transactions. They shipped us a router that setup an IPSec tunnel and it had a backup ISDN connection on it as well. I wish ACH was more accessible. In many other countrie…

In the UK we have "faster payments" and money these days typically appears in about 15 minutes or so

Faster payments was mandated by the European Payment Services Directive.

All European countries have it.

Up next: Payment Services Directive 2 - API access to bank accounts. This is going to be interesting.

Re: How ACH works: A developer perspective (2014)

#129

Post by timClicks »

djsumdog wrote: post #95
mdip wrote: post #45

I noticed a few comments specifically referencing FTP (and who can blame them since the HN title as of this moment specifically references it). In the first post of the series, the author refers to the server as a "Secure FTP" server, which can be confusing to read[0]. In later parts (and a little googling of my own), it's clear that the server is actually an SFTP server, not a plain-old FTP server. It's still plenty…

My first job in 2005 was to take over an ACH processing system that was written for our company. It was all in Perl. :-P ACH format is super weird .. tons of lines with 99999 on them as separators. And yes, we had to go through a bank to do any ACH transactions. They shipped us a router that setup an IPSec tunnel and it had a backup ISDN connection on it as well. I wish ACH was more accessible. In many other countrie…

New Zealand banks now process inter-bank payments on the same day.

Re: How ACH works: A developer perspective (2014)

#130

Post by joshribakoff »

teddyh wrote: post #115
joshribakoff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I added that but the particular node sftp implementation I used from github just simply didn't work with FileZilla. Only the command line. Don't know why.

Whenever someone says “from github”, I mentally replace it with “from some random guy on the street” to give it its appropriate intuitive feeling.

Sure I don't care who wrote it if it works and passes our code review and the license matches. Plenty of crap software comes out of big name companies and plenty of random people on the street can write good code.
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