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Column – a chartered bank for developers

column.com

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Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#161

Post by GregorStocks »

civilized wrote: post #155
whockey wrote: 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!

I'm excited about this because it may help with a problem I've had for many years: in a word, being my family's CFO. I'm a data scientist, and I'd like to be able to report as easily on my own personal finances as I can on the data of the company I work for. This is not a small thing for me. I want to take care of my family's finances, but I'm impatient with bullshit. I don't want to spend an hour every weekend loggi…

You might be interested in Tiller Money https://www.tillerhq.com/. They provide something very much along these lines, with the output being an auto-updating Google Sheet that you can do whatever you like with. You do still need to update credentials sometimes, but I've been using it for a few years and it works quite well.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#164

Post by sp527 »

There’s something about this that smells like “anyone can now operate a bank without a charter or being subjected to regulatory oversight” that’s maximally distressing and I think it’s incumbent upon the founders to clarify their intent.

A proliferation of loosely regulated banking entities was the basis for an economic disaster over a century ago in the US when fractional reserve logic had yet to be formalized. I’m sure that Column enforces reserve requirements, but this has the stench of something that could enable some analogous calamity in the financial (and therefore real) world.

It was no less esteemed a figure than Galbraith himself who noted that there’s really no such thing as innovation in finance - it’s just people finding ways to run the same kinds of scams over and over again.

What’s to stop someone from using this to create a ‘virtual’ depository institution, issue bad loans against deposits that it attracts with the promise of extraordinary interest, monetize the loans for personal enrichment, and then crash and burn when the aggregate default rate of the loan portfolio becomes unsustainable, sticking the FDIC (and therefore taxpayers) with the bill? And that’s just one of many possible fraud scenarios.

The answer is either “nothing” or that Column doesn’t really matter as a company because the theoretical customer base is vanishingly small and it doesn’t solve the truly important problems in banking.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#165

Post by civilized »

GregorStocks wrote: post #161
civilized wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm excited about this because it may help with a problem I've had for many years: in a word, being my family's CFO. I'm a data scientist, and I'd like to be able to report as easily on my own personal finances as I can on the data of the company I work for. This is not a small thing for me. I want to take care of my family's finances, but I'm impatient with bullshit. I don't want to spend an hour every weekend loggi…

You might be interested in Tiller Money https://www.tillerhq.com/ . They provide something very much along these lines, with the output being an auto-updating Google Sheet that you can do whatever you like with. You do still need to update credentials sometimes, but I've been using it for a few years and it works quite well.

I've never heard of this! I've seen millions of ads over the last few years, why haven't any of them been for this! I will check it out, thank you!

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#167

Post by frays »

whockey wrote: 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!

Would you consider Column a Neobank [0] or would this sit in a different category?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neobank

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#168

Post by ncake »

If this is a US-only service, it should say so on the website somewhere.

I've also had this experience with e.g. Betterment and Wealthfront. The only way to find out they're US-only is halfway through sign up process, not even anywhere in FAQ's.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#169

Post by shivaas »

usrn wrote: post #146
thecosas wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

this is probably closer to the truth that you might have imagined :) that at that most of the $1T+ ACH transfers that happen daily in the US banking system happen over plaintext files and SFTP (source: I've written one of these files)

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#170

Post by shivaas »

fensterblick wrote: post #16

Questions for the founding team, and others: What books or resources did you helpful in understanding the plumbing of the US banking system?

https://www.fintechbookclub.com/ and https://notafintech.company/ are two other resources I'd point you at to learn more about US banking and fintech in general.
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