Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Visa Buys Plaid

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 333 posts

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#11

Post by joshstrange »

throwaway13000 wrote: post #4

So, pertinent question. I want to move my account to a bank which gives me an API so I don't have to deal with Plaid or Mint. I.e. I want data privacy. I want to build a personal dashboard of where my money is going. Any suggestions?

If you find one let me know. That was the promise of Simple Bank when they launched. I've been with them around 7+ years now and a couple years in they quietly removed that claim from their website and support responses said they weren't working on it anymore. They are still a decent bank but API access never materialized.

In fact I randomly came across me bemoaning this fact 5 years ago lol [0]. Also at one point I wrote my own small wrapper to access parts of their internal API [1] but I haven't touched that in years so I seriously doubt it still works at all.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10623628

[1] https://github.com/joshstrange/simplebank

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#12

Post by tempsy »

Have to say I'm not a fan of Plaid at all.

Dark patterns galore. Absolutely no indication when you go through a Plaid flow that you're likely giving away much more than just the bare minimum account numbers to push money in/out of your bank account. Often, you're also giving away transaction data, identity, real-time balance, etc. There's no way to know prior to linking your account.

I had high hopes that would have made things more transparent given the new CCPA laws that went into effect on the 1st but have not seen anything change.

Edit: I think the 4D chess move here by Visa is the amount of data Plaid has. Bank transaction data from all types of transactions, not just Visa ones, is massively valuable.

If people were concerned about Google acquiring Fitbit data I would be incredibly concerned about Visa basically buying all financial transaction data...the FTC should really investigate the acquisition.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#13

Post by Operyl »

apazzolini wrote: post #6
throwaway13000 wrote: post #4

So, pertinent question. I want to move my account to a bank which gives me an API so I don't have to deal with Plaid or Mint. I.e. I want data privacy. I want to build a personal dashboard of where my money is going. Any suggestions?

You could try Actual [1], which stores your data locally. It does however go through Plaid. Would be interesting if there was an alternative option to screenscrape your online banking portal. [1] https://actualbudget.com/

However, it seems, that isn't even out yet:

"Bank syncing is a critical feature that is coming soon!"

You can manually import QFX/other standard formats though, but not all banks have exports of this, and it's very manual.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#15

Post by objclxt »

throwaway13000 wrote: post #4

So, pertinent question. I want to move my account to a bank which gives me an API so I don't have to deal with Plaid or Mint. I.e. I want data privacy. I want to build a personal dashboard of where my money is going. Any suggestions?

> Any suggestions?

Lobby your lawmakers. Banks have no incentive to provide open APIs.

For example, in the UK banks did nothing until they were forced to - the market regulator now requires the nine largest banks to provide an open API (https://www.openbanking.org.uk).

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#16

Post by tempsy »

brunoTbear wrote: post #3

Will be interesting to see the terms for the acquisition and see if Mary Meeker's last investment for KP was a winner or not! I'm cautiously optimistic for a good outcome for the Plaid folks here: last round was two years ago for $250M. Could they have been suffering $10M/month losses and are running out of money? Could be. No offense to Visa, but I don't think of them as the most innovative organization or one that…

> No offense to Visa, but I don't think of them as the most innovative organization

Visa is a $434B company. I guess "innovative" is subjective but their valuation trajectory has looked like a high growth tech co over the past 5 years.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#17

Post by brunoTbear »

tempsy wrote: post #16
brunoTbear wrote: post #3

Will be interesting to see the terms for the acquisition and see if Mary Meeker's last investment for KP was a winner or not! I'm cautiously optimistic for a good outcome for the Plaid folks here: last round was two years ago for $250M. Could they have been suffering $10M/month losses and are running out of money? Could be. No offense to Visa, but I don't think of them as the most innovative organization or one that…

> No offense to Visa, but I don't think of them as the most innovative organization Visa is a $434B company. I guess "innovative" is subjective but their valuation trajectory has looked like a high growth tech co over the past 5 years.

That's fair. 3x valuation growth in the last 5 years is tech company level. More or less the same trajectory as GOOG and FB.

It's not Stripe or Airbnb level growth, however.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#19

Post by tempsy »

brunoTbear wrote: post #17
tempsy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No offense to Visa, but I don't think of them as the most innovative organization Visa is a $434B company. I guess "innovative" is subjective but their valuation trajectory has looked like a high growth tech co over the past 5 years.

That's fair. 3x valuation growth in the last 5 years is tech company level. More or less the same trajectory as GOOG and FB. It's not Stripe or Airbnb level growth, however.

no one suggested that it was.

my point is that it's clearly not a dying dinosaur of a company. if anything, Visa has too much power in our financial system as more transactions are non-cash and non-ACH based.

Re: Visa Buys Plaid

#20

Post by Cu3PO42 »

throwaway13000 wrote: post #4

So, pertinent question. I want to move my account to a bank which gives me an API so I don't have to deal with Plaid or Mint. I.e. I want data privacy. I want to build a personal dashboard of where my money is going. Any suggestions?

I must say I was quite surprised when I read this comment. In Germany we have FinTS [1] with an open specification and I'm not aware of a single bank that doesn't support it. It's been around since 2002 [2] and is based on HBCI, which became available in 1998 [3].

I suspected it might be different elsewhere, but I had no idea that the situation was so dire that you had to actively go looking for a bank with an API.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FinTS

[2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_Transaction_Services (German)

[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebanking_Computer_Interface (German)

Post reply on HN