Does anyone know what they used to produce their API documentation?
We built everything in house!
It looks fantastic, as does the whole product. I’ve been hoping for someone to make a good bank-in-a-box for a long time. Good luck!
Column – a chartered bank for developers
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Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers
#172Earlier 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
That sounds very similar to what Starling Bank offers in the UK, it doesn't sound that novel and new to me.
Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers
#173Hey 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!
Does this work in Puerto Rico?
Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers
#174Nice job, are you available in europe? If not, do you know any competitor doing something similar/when are you heading here?
We’re rolling out something similar for the UK with https://griffin.sh - aiming to get our bank license this year. Then expanding to the rest of Europe :)
Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a little confused about who your customers are. Do I have this right? - Competent to develop and manage AML, KYC programs - Wants to handle underwriting, fraud, compliance & operational risk exposure - Develops software - Doesn't want to talk to ACH & VISA - Operates only in the US Who is that?
I imagine these limitations are going to be a moving target as they grow. A lot of developer driven organizations are very happy to outsource complex parts of development to managed services so they can focus on their core differentiators, especially when it comes to parts of the stack that need super high availability and security. This is why Auth0/Okta are big businesses and not everyone rolls their own key cloak…
I guess my point is that payment and ledger back-ends aren't the hardest part about running a bank, they aren't even the hardest technology component. This isn't "for developers" in the same sense that Stripe is. It is for people ready to run a bank. Sure it will save you paying lawyers and regulators for charters and it will save you from buying a mainframe to run some crufty COBOL ledger but that still leaves a lot of yak shaving before you even get to the interesting part of your Fintech product.
Okta is successful because almost every application needs authentication, almost every organization needs SSO, and no one considers it a core competency.
The intersection of organizations who can run a bank but don't already have entrenched software to do so, and want to build all the other software themselves seems vanishingly small.
Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers
#176Will this service allow me to replace Stripe?
Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers
#177Hey, I’m an ex-Square that is part of founding engineering team at Column. My team will be monitoring this thread and we’ll be happy to answer any questions! Especially those about ACH, I’m sure you have plenty and we know it through-out!
Can you talk about instant ACH, why do some charter partners like Robinhood and Coinbase support it but other legacy banks don't?
How is instant ACH different to regular? Also, is it true that ACH is not instant bank to bank – essentially the banks settle up at the end of each month with 1 giant transaction?
What about P2P support via Zelle, I recently learned it's lipstick on a pig and basically ACH under the hood.
Sorry in advance if the questions are outside the scope of this thread.
Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers
#178Hey 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 a little confused about who your customers are. Do I have this right? - Competent to develop and manage AML, KYC programs - Wants to handle underwriting, fraud, compliance & operational risk exposure - Develops software - Doesn't want to talk to ACH & VISA - Operates only in the US Who is that?
This is my line of query as well.
At this level of integration minutiae I don't see a the benefit in not integrating directly with card issuers and ACH.
Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers
#179Could you share more on the legal entities that underlie Column? In particular, what’s actually chartered at OCC and a member of FDIC? I can’t find you, but maybe you just have a different name (for now?)
Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers
#180Congratulations on the launch! I wonder if this kind of business model, where it looks like there is basically "one really rich guy self-funding" for a couple of years, is going to be more common. That is, just looking at the site, my guess is that building everything from the ground up (core banking stack, acquiring the chartered bank, then all the APIs and tech on top of that) must have taken many years and many, m…
> must have taken many years and many, many millions of dollars I don't have any inside knowledge, and obviously you can burn many millions even with a small team but: "We started building Column in 2019 and launched in 2022." [0] "We’re only six engineers (seven if you count me…but I’m a weekend code pusher)" [1] [0] https://column.com/company/ [1] https://column.com/blog/hiring-at-column/
Yeah, agreed, it looks like they are very efficient. But I'm very familiar with the Bank as a Service space, and your data points very much prove my point:
1. The reason so many BaaS companies partner with existing banks is because the process of getting a bank charter is incredibly time consuming and expensive. There are tons of costs just in legal/compliance before you've even done anything. I'm not 100% clear if Column bought an existing chartered bank or got a new charter, but either route is millions right off the get go.
2. As you point out, they were at 3 years from founding to launch. That's an eternity in the VC-funded startup world. Most startups have an initial MVP in a ~6 month time frame.