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Column – a chartered bank for developers

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Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#261

Post by adave »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #212
kommstar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now I have an account now where I can deposit USDC and spend via tap to pay/debit card. Basically just a debit card linked crypto account, rewards are $$$ (4%) and adjusting balances is fast and easy. Also programmable so I can replace what is spent without having to manually transfer. This helps tremendously with managing the families access/budgeting of funds. Would also be nice to have an account where legac…

4% - where does that come from? Sounds too good.

Yeah Crypto especially USDC is really not worth the risk.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#262

Post by password4321 »

I have two separate lines of questioning:

1. Does this paint a bigger target on your back, exposing more via custom APIs than most?

2. What do you plan to ban via Terms of Service? Do you have the stomach for things other payment processors don't? (adult, fringe groups, etc.)

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#263

Post by avianlyric »

hef19898 wrote: post #256
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 C…

>> Bank as a Service So, banking?

Not quite. BaaS just provides the banking rails. The ability the send, receive and store money.

But it’s up to their customers to build actual products on top of it. Such as bank accounts, loans etc. Otherwise all you really have is a REST API that happens to be able to move money. But good luck getting your average consumer to pay for that.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#264

Post by [deleted] »

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #186
whockey wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you noticed the account numbers as pointers concept - we think its pretty cool. I think there's some rad use cases that people will come up with! Thanks on the typo...deploying now :0

This is great. I designed a similar system at Simple and it pained me that it never got implemented.

[deleted]

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#265

Post by TheColorYellow »

jeremyjh wrote: post #175
mushufasa wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Most FinTech is like this though. User Facing front end custom services built on top of bank infra. The bank infra is typically a bank partner and rarely is something like Stripe depending on the exact use case. This basically provides an intermediate alternative between Stripe and bespoke banking relationship.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#266

Post by hef19898 »

avianlyric wrote: post #263
hef19898 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Bank as a Service So, banking?

Not quite. BaaS just provides the banking rails. The ability the send, receive and store money. But it’s up to their customers to build actual products on top of it. Such as bank accounts, loans etc. Otherwise all you really have is a REST API that happens to be able to move money. But good luck getting your average consumer to pay for that.

And who's owning the banking license in that case? Because to me that sounds a lot like, well, banking. And wasn't aware that the ability to move money from one account to another is actually a big issue. And if it's just the software banks use, well, they already use it, don't they?

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#267

Post by astura »

jawns wrote: post #79
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!

Column's website says the company is "100% founder and employee owned." I'm curious about that ownership structure. I'm assuming you're not organized as a worker cooperative, with a "one worker, one vote" structure? Would you be willing to offer any details about the ownership stake of the founders vs. the other employees and what sort of decision making employees' ownership stake entitles them to?

"Employee owned" almost always just means the company has an ESOP.[1]

It doesn't mean employees get any say in anything at all, it just means the employees are the company's shareholders. The board and upper management still has full say in all policies and operations.

Source: I worked almost exclusively at employee owned companies (though not intentionally). Working for an employee owned company is not meaningfully different than working for a public company or private company.

BTW, ESOPs have significant tax advantages for a founder [2]

[1] https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/employee-stock-ownershi...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/darrendahl/2016/07/07/if-you-di...

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#268

Post by MaxMoney »

patentatt wrote: post #239
Animats wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Banking is highly regulated at both the state and federal levels, it astounds me that they're able to have such a blatantly consumer hostile clause in their terms. Either this is plainly unenforceable (which happens and companies do all the time), or it is illegal and will get them a fat fine (seems unlikely though), or we live in a dystopian-Randian hellscape (most likely).

No post body was provided.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#269

Post by quickthrower2 »

adave wrote: post #261
quickthrower2 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4% - where does that come from? Sounds too good.

Yeah Crypto especially USDC is really not worth the risk.

It might be ok if you load up the card a few minutes before each transaction but that would be quite a hassle
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