171–180 of 257 posts
I hate sounding like a VC jerk, but the banking industry needs some serious disruption.
The american banking industry, maybe. One of the ills of VC-mania is the ongoing assumption that a) problems that exist in the US exist everywhere and b) that there are no other problems. (see also: Uber busting the "taxi monopoly")
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> My problem is that it does not even allow access to your own account. Here, use our application to aggregate data about your financial history, just give it access to your data and it'll give you all sorts of useful stats. Do not look behind the curtain, we're definitely not snaffling your data and giving it to anyone we feel like... --edit-- The number of people who would be competent to write their own API-using…
> If you allow people access to their own account data via an API then they will seek out software to help them access it Is that a bad thing? How about we let people do whatever they want with their data? Not to mention the lack of APIs doesn’t stop this - there is an entire industry built on top of scraping bank’s web UIs. Companies like TrueLayer will happily take online banking credentials and provide you with an…
Of course not. But it makes sense to ensure that the vendors of these products are FCA approved.
> How about we let people do whatever they want with their data?
For the same reason we can't have quite a lot of other nice things - scammers and shysters will take advantage.
> there is an entire industry built on top of scraping bank’s web UIs.
There is, and now you can have a choice - a well functioning, secure ecosystem with oversight, or giving your login credentials to some third party to abuse as they see fit.
This is very clever but makes me sad. It’s 2018 and the best, cleanest way of monitoring and storing my own transactions programmatically is by scraping an email.
*in America Banks provide an API in Europe. In fact it's a legal requirement that's coming into force in 2019, and there are a lot of 'mobile-first' banks like Monzo and Revolut which make this entirely un-needed in the first place (providing spending exports, decent analytics, push notifications, etc etc). Welcome to the future. Contact your local politician if you want to join us. Maybe also ask about chip and pin…
That's simply not true. You're probably referring to PSD2, which is not an API in the sense that anyone technical would use the term. And it's not meant for you or I. The requirements for gaining PSD2 API access are insane, and at least in some areas require permission from the national bank. Which you won't get unless you're a large corp with big bucks and lots of insurance.
In the UK the fintech (Financial Tech) scene is becoming more prevalent, for the better. Recently I switched to a new online-only bank called Monzo. It's fully licensed and all accounts are insured up to a certain amount by the UK government. It's great. They're in the top charts for apps in the UK now on the iOS App Store. There's a few other alternatives like Starling Bank and Revolut too. They're very good. They'r…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
*in America Banks provide an API in Europe. In fact it's a legal requirement that's coming into force in 2019, and there are a lot of 'mobile-first' banks like Monzo and Revolut which make this entirely un-needed in the first place (providing spending exports, decent analytics, push notifications, etc etc). Welcome to the future. Contact your local politician if you want to join us. Maybe also ask about chip and pin…
With Monzo you can just use IFTTT[1] for simple stuff like this, and the API[2] for complicated stuff. I personally use the API to automatically add flat bill directly to Splitwise. [1] https://monzo.com/features/ifttt/ [2] https://docs.monzo.com
In the UK the fintech (Financial Tech) scene is becoming more prevalent, for the better. Recently I switched to a new online-only bank called Monzo. It's fully licensed and all accounts are insured up to a certain amount by the UK government. It's great. They're in the top charts for apps in the UK now on the iOS App Store. There's a few other alternatives like Starling Bank and Revolut too. They're very good. They'r…
Revolut are a nightmare. After using it for several months and fully verified I apparently entered a CVV incorrectly on one transaction. Revolut blocked the card but with no notification, and no inapp indicators, all showed normal in app, all toggled enabled for maximum flexibility. It took ages to figure out, but swiping the card or using online was now returning to the merchant 'FRAUD/STOLEN' marker rather than jus…
After a couple of months, they acknowledged the issue and provided me a free new Revolut Visa. It still took about 2 months to get it in my hands, after having sent a couple of messages via Twitter.
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> If you want to gain access to APIs, you need to become an “AISP” It's more complicated than that. Banks can give unregulated entities access to their APIs, but they don't because IMO providing API access is directly opposed to their interests. If you want to be statutorily entitled to API access you need to be a registered AISP or PISP. Unfortunately what an AIS is is very specific, i.e. showing the account owner a…
To be honest those requirements sound perfect for a scrappy startup. Just enough of a moat to deter 99% of drive by hackers, but within the reach of any reasonably serious startup. - £1,500 application fee - €50,000 own capital requirements If you're aiming to play in this league you really should be able to scrape together this kind of money. - 3 months wait Can also be seen as a 3 month delay imposed on your compet…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Revolut are a nightmare. After using it for several months and fully verified I apparently entered a CVV incorrectly on one transaction. Revolut blocked the card but with no notification, and no inapp indicators, all showed normal in app, all toggled enabled for maximum flexibility. It took ages to figure out, but swiping the card or using online was now returning to the merchant 'FRAUD/STOLEN' marker rather than jus…
Thank you so much for posting this. Kept waiting for my Revolut invite, but now I know to steer clear.