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Column – a chartered bank for developers

column.com

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Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#241

Post by yowlingcat »

_praf wrote: post #206
yowlingcat wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excited to kick the tires on this. Assuming it's correct to think of Column as a very special BaaS vendor (which owns its own bank and thus AVOIDS the double program manager problem), how would you compare and contrast your your unique value prop compared to other BaaS vendors like a Unit, Synapse, Treasury Prime? Would it be fair to assume better economics because your supply chain is more vertically integrated, or…

Eng @ Column here. Unlike the other BaaS providers, we ARE the bank. So the buck stops with us so to speak. You won't have to deal with middleware or a bunch of other partner banks, which we like to think is a much better experience.

That is certainly great from the experience side of things, but what I'm wondering about is the economics side of things -- that is, will I get more competitive revenue shares than with other BaaS vendors given that you are the bank?

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#243

Post by joshbaptiste »

strzalek wrote: post #2

Hey, 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!

Will you blog about your back-end tech stack? It's interesting what a NEO-bank has to run these days to interface with other banks

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#244

Post by simulate-me »

_praf wrote: post #134
procrastinatus wrote: post #126

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.

But what is the practical difference to the API user? This seems like caring that about how the API is implemented, which is usually not a concern for a SaaS consumer.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#245

Post by sentientslug »

Animats wrote: post #227
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #84

Congratulations 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…

acquiring the chartered bank They seem to have bought Northern California National Bank in Chico, CA.[1] The Column web site doesn't mention it, but they still have a physical branch in Chico. The FDIC gives their web site as "norcalbank.com", although it does show the name change to Column. Their site has no street address and "domain name only" TLS certificate from Amazon, so you don't really know for sure that col…

Here's more related info from the bank themselves on this "name change": https://www.norcalbank.com/AboutUs/News/LegalNameFAQs

Looks like the brick and mortar branch is staying open (for now).

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#246

Post by neya »

Animats wrote: post #227
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #84

Congratulations 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…

acquiring the chartered bank They seem to have bought Northern California National Bank in Chico, CA.[1] The Column web site doesn't mention it, but they still have a physical branch in Chico. The FDIC gives their web site as "norcalbank.com", although it does show the name change to Column. Their site has no street address and "domain name only" TLS certificate from Amazon, so you don't really know for sure that col…

THIS is why I am on HN. Thank you for the research. Excellent.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#247

Post by carterschonwald »

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!

This is giving me so many flashbacks to my time at jpmorgan. There’s a bunch of wonderfully interesting corner cases I’d really love to learn about how you address!

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#248

Post by jjeaff »

vinceguidry wrote: post #195
jjeaff wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a rather sophisticated analysis here, yet, you left out the most important factor: risk. Something that every sophisticated investor must take into account. And in the case of your personal residence, you have to take into account not only investment risk, market risk and interest rate risk (which you alluded to re: refinancing, but you left out the fact that you are not guaranteed to be able to refinance an…

If they're banking cash they would have otherwise put into their mortgage, then that extra liquidity is going to be a good thing should it come to foreclosure.

If you are banking the cash, rather than investing it, then the whole plan goes out the window because your cash is losing value while you also pay interest.

You can buy Series I bonds as was mentioned but those are variable interest and have only been worth buying the last year or so. They have been low interest for the last 30 plus years. Also, you can only buy up to $10k in series I bonds per year.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#249

Post by binkHN »

Animats wrote: post #227
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #84

Congratulations 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…

acquiring the chartered bank They seem to have bought Northern California National Bank in Chico, CA.[1] The Column web site doesn't mention it, but they still have a physical branch in Chico. The FDIC gives their web site as "norcalbank.com", although it does show the name change to Column. Their site has no street address and "domain name only" TLS certificate from Amazon, so you don't really know for sure that col…

> "THE MAXIMUM AGGREGATE LIABILITY OF BANK AND ITS AFFILIATES, AND ITS AND THEIR LICENSORS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS, FOR ALL DAMAGES, LOSSES, AND CAUSES OF ACTION, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE) OR OTHERWISE, WILL BE TEN U.S. DOLLARS ($10.00)."

Got to love agreeing to online contracts where it's not possible to make any changes! That said, isn't this a case where the FDIC steps in and restores a decent chunk of your account if the bank screws up?

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#250

Post by anamax »

VincentEvans wrote: post #43

Congrats on launching! I just want to vent about something bank-related, and hopefully bait someone to tell me how this solves it. Or something else solves it. Have you ever heard how you could pay off your mortgage a lot quicker by making bi-weekly payments instead of monthly? Or how you can include extra with your payment and instruct your bank to apply it directly to the premium, helping you reduce your interest?…

Bi-weekly payments isn't much different from making one extra payment each year, either by double-paying one month or paying 1/12 extra each month.

I've had more than my share of mortgages and every one of them has had the equivalent of an "extra principal payment" line on both the on-line and off-line payment systems.

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