First off, congrats!
The problem I always run into with existing offerings, which as you mention all go through Plaid or Yodlee, is that there is never enough transaction history available for what I need. Typically, its only 3 months' worth at most.
Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app
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Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app
#32> We take an entirely different approach by building direct integrations... > Private APIs need to be reverse engineered and are liable to change at any moment, so we had to develop systems to catch breaking changes and are always on alert to address them. Isn't this still, essentially, screen-scraping? Reverse-engineering private APIs (presumably from their mobile apps, I'd imagine) and doing the abuse/block dance w…
While we try to form relationships with all of the brokerages we integrate with (including the ones we reverse engineer), we do still have to do the abuse/block dance with their protective systems occasionally. We've found that cutting out headless browsers has made it much easier to do this, for two main reasons: 1) Some brokerages have fairly sophisticated anti-screen-scraping protections, but their private APIs ar…
“I ask my neighbours for some of their apples, but if they don’t give them, I go into their garden at nighttime with a big ladder…”
Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app
#33Is there any brokerage who’s terms of service or fraud liability protections aren’t entirely waived by using a service like this? Do end users provide the credentials for their brokerage accounts?
I can’t imagine any infosec officer or general counsel at a brokerage agreeing to screen scraped data collection. They already get enough legal threats for bad pricing / bad execution, this would be an entirely new can of worms.
Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app
#34First off, congrats! The problem I always run into with existing offerings, which as you mention all go through Plaid or Yodlee, is that there is never enough transaction history available for what I need. Typically, its only 3 months' worth at most.
We pull up to 15 years of transaction history which we believe should cover the majority, if not the entirety of a users transaction history.
Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
We see ourselves as somewhat of a spiritual successor to TradeIt - we're trying to provide high-quality access to brokerage accounts so that people can build better investing apps on top of existing brokerages. In terms of pricing: we charge a $300/mo base fee for your first 300 linked brokerage accounts, then $1/linked account/mo thereafter, with reduced pricing at various levels of scale.
Do you plan to offer a more developer friendly pricing?
We're still experimenting with pricing and would be happy to hear your thoughts on what sort of price structure would be more developer friendly. To set our current pricing, we looked at comparable companies like Plaid.
By the way, you can start testing with live accounts for free (maxed out at 3) by creating an account here https://www.realizefi.com/register.
Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmmm also ignorant on this, but is that legal? I’d assume it’s a TOS violation at least. Would using this cause accounts to be banned in these direct integrations?
Different brokerages take different positions on these sorts of integrations - some go after all third-party integrations aggressively (including screen scrapers), while some will turn a blind eye as long as you're not abusing their platform. For a brokerage like Robinhood, we've only seen them take enforcement actions against individuals if they send a high volume of orders in a short timeframe. It's worth noting th…
Haha awesome thanks for your response this seems like a super useful service.
Congrats on the launch and good luck! :)
Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app
#37Is there any brokerage who’s terms of service or fraud liability protections aren’t entirely waived by using a service like this? Do end users provide the credentials for their brokerage accounts? I can’t imagine any infosec officer or general counsel at a brokerage agreeing to screen scraped data collection. They already get enough legal threats for bad pricing / bad execution, this would be an entirely new can of w…
We do sanctioned integrations with brokerages wherever OAuth integrations are available such that we don't have to collect credentials, but for the ones without public APIs we do need to collect credentials (though we never store them). Unfortunately, the industry is in a mode where brokerages will develop anti-screen-scraping technology and data aggregators will develop new and creative solutions to evade detection - the demand for access to retail accounts is too great for screen scrapers to stop what they're doing, and the regulatory and technical risks are too great for brokerages to lean back and allow screen scrapers to do what they do.
Many of the major brokerages are realizing that this isn't ideal and are starting to build out public APIs. We're working to develop relationships with the holdouts and convince them that exposing a public API is the only sustainable long-term solution to their screen scraping problem.
Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app
#38Reminds me of https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190403005265/en/Tra... How does your pricing work?
We see ourselves as somewhat of a spiritual successor to TradeIt - we're trying to provide high-quality access to brokerage accounts so that people can build better investing apps on top of existing brokerages. In terms of pricing: we charge a $300/mo base fee for your first 300 linked brokerage accounts, then $1/linked account/mo thereafter, with reduced pricing at various levels of scale.
Ha, nice! I used to work at TradeIt, and was about to reach out to some of my former co-workers and tell them about you. It's no small undertaking, congrats on the launch.
Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
We see ourselves as somewhat of a spiritual successor to TradeIt - we're trying to provide high-quality access to brokerage accounts so that people can build better investing apps on top of existing brokerages. In terms of pricing: we charge a $300/mo base fee for your first 300 linked brokerage accounts, then $1/linked account/mo thereafter, with reduced pricing at various levels of scale.
Ha, nice! I used to work at TradeIt, and was about to reach out to some of my former co-workers and tell them about you. It's no small undertaking, congrats on the launch.
Thank you!
Re: Launch HN: Realize (YC W22) – Integrate brokerage accounts into your site or app
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think "direct integrations" as a euphemism from "using reverse-engineered private APIs in violation of their terms" is dishonest.
That's a fair point - we've been trying to determine the best way to compress "using reverse-engineered private APIs in violation of their terms, but in practice brokerages don't really take enforcement actions against this," and "direct integrations" is what we came up with. We'll work on finding a better way to express this and are open to suggestions.
I think "unofficial API" is probably the most succinct phrase without being dishonest. A direct integration does imply some kind of professional relationship with the other company.