Live data from Hacker News

Column – a chartered bank for developers

column.com

141–150 of 299 posts

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#141
post #18

> Create account numbers that point to a single bank account and create specific permissions and limits for each one. I love that; there are so many places that give a 6% discount for using ACH but I don't want to give out my bank account details willy-nilly --- If you have influence over it, I wouldn't recommend having https://status.column.com/uptime default to "Sandbox" since I doubt seriously that's what anyone w…

Credit card networks offer a similar thing. They call it payment network tokens. Basically, the network gives the merchant/processor/store/etc a Uuid string that's an identifier for your credit card. Then the merchant sends that UUID string (the token) to the network and the network sends the real credit card details to the issuer for authorization.

So instead of giving merchants real financial info, they just get a pass to charge your credit card without the details of it.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#142
This looks interesting. Their “before” picture is a bit misleading though; it’s a worst-case. You can already get an account with Silicon Valley Bank as a startup and originate ACH directly over NACHA (source: I built this).

However, providing an API abstraction over ACH is cool. I would say it’s worth paying a bit more to Stripe to not have to deal with ACH directly, but then you add a payment hop between you and your payees (==delay) so having a bank that offers a nice API without adding a hop would be very useful.

Note that “FBO” (for benefit of) bank accounts are actually quite a valuable feature that is expensive to set up as a startup, and let you execute some exotic legal/funds-flow structures. So pretty cool that you can get those.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#143
post #18

> Create account numbers that point to a single bank account and create specific permissions and limits for each one. I love that; there are so many places that give a 6% discount for using ACH but I don't want to give out my bank account details willy-nilly --- If you have influence over it, I wouldn't recommend having https://status.column.com/uptime default to "Sandbox" since I doubt seriously that's what anyone w…

Credit card networks offer a similar thing. They call it payment network tokens. Basically, the network gives the merchant/processor/store/etc a Uuid string that's an identifier for your credit card. Then the merchant sends that UUID string (the token) to the network and the network sends the real credit card details to the issuer for authorization. So instead of giving merchants real financial info, they just get a…

Yes, I've been making heavy use of that over the years, from Amex's early offering through Privacy.com and now Capital One's anemic offering

There's still quite a few merchants which give it the evil eye since evidently one can distinguish them from "real" credit cards if the processor chooses to look, but it's better than nothing

Column is the first I've ever heard of a bank offering this level of financial firewalling

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#144
post #25
post #8

Hey founder (and OP) here. This has been a labor of love for the past few years and I'm super stoked on what we shipped. Would love any and all feedback, thoughts and questions!

How would you describe your business to a five year old?

From what I gather this is the Tesla of banks (comparing new kid on the block to the old guard – Tesla vs GM): meaning it's a modern bank with systems that run on something newer than COBOL with an open API. It's extremely cool and looks like it may set the standard of what banks must be in the future to compete with newer generations coming into the market.

EDIT: add " coming into the market" to the end

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero. The whole stack is built in golang from scratch and we integrate with FED over some... interesting protocols.

we integrate with FED over some... interesting protocols. Would love to know more!

My understanding is they sftp batches of CSV files at eachother.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#148
post #134

How does this compare with Stripe Treasury (banking as a service)? https://stripe.com/treasury

Engineer at Column here! The difference between us and ALL banking as a service companies (Stripe Treasury, Unit, etc) is that we are the actual underlying bank in the transaction. BaaS companies usually wrap one or several banks (like us) to provide their API's.

Could I create a bank account for personal use that has api access? Or is the product only for businesses that issue cards and accounts to others?

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#149
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you describe your business to a five year old?

From what I gather this is the Tesla of banks (comparing new kid on the block to the old guard – Tesla vs GM): meaning it's a modern bank with systems that run on something newer than COBOL with an open API. It's extremely cool and looks like it may set the standard of what banks must be in the future to compete with newer generations coming into the market. EDIT: add " coming into the market" to the end

not a bad analogy!

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#150
Will you bank businesses related to cannabis but that don't touch cannabis?

Also, your 'Verify' email still has a bunch of default template text in it.

""This is preheader text. Some clients will show this text as a preview.""

-- Root/Entity & Beneficial Owner form has some ambigious error messages; doesn't show where what is wrong (eg: which of the three addresses was bad?) -- and the message disappears before it can be acted on.

Post reply on HN