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Stripe Financial Connections

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Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#11

Post by haswell »

rglover wrote: post #6
zinekeller wrote: post #4

Question: are US banking really this dysfunctional? Where I'm from, a bank consortium already provided unified login services (while banks still have their own websites, as a merchant you only need to integrate the consortium-provided APIs rather than using Plaid) simplifying things.

Yes. Some banks still run COBOL behind the scenes here.

For some systems, this is arguably a feature. Banks are rightly cautious about touching core transaction processing systems, systems that cost millions per minute when down.

But the use of COBOL generally doesn’t extend to the consumer facing product, or the APIs that support those consumer facing experiences.

Banks may be backwards, but the use of older languages is not one of the primary reasons.

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#13

Post by axg11 »

nitsky wrote: post #3

Is this good news or bad news for Plaid?

This is bad. Stripe doesn't have to provide the best service here. A lot of companies already use Stripe making the barrier to trying this out very low. Likewise for startups, if you're already trying out Stripe billing for your MVP you're more likely to use another Stripe product than to try out Plaid.

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#14

Post by zht »

ianstormtaylor wrote: post #10

If Stripe can leverage their banking relationships to leapfrog Plaid by integrating directly with bank's APIs instead of doing screen scraping... that would be massive! It seems like Plaid's biggest weakness is the flakiness of their connections, which creates so much frustration/churn downstream. Plaid's other weakness is their opaque, enterprise-style pricing, which is seems like Stripe is doing away with. Hopefull…

It's unlikely Stripe has access to any APIs that Plaid doesn't also have access to.

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#15

Post by gigatexal »

ianstormtaylor wrote: post #10

If Stripe can leverage their banking relationships to leapfrog Plaid by integrating directly with bank's APIs instead of doing screen scraping... that would be massive! It seems like Plaid's biggest weakness is the flakiness of their connections, which creates so much frustration/churn downstream. Plaid's other weakness is their opaque, enterprise-style pricing, which is seems like Stripe is doing away with. Hopefull…

If they do this it would indeed be huge. Screen scraping and the like to get around a proper API sucks. In the EU we have PSD2 but the APIs aren’t all amazing.

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#16

Post by rmbyrro »

yohannparis wrote: post #7
rglover wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Some banks still run COBOL behind the scenes here.

running COBOL behind the scenes have nothing to do with an easy API access and a consortium for interbanking.

Maybe they pointed out as an indication that some financial institutions in the US are not modern technologically speaking, and that may be a cause for lacking better APIs?

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#17

Post by kadomony »

axg11 wrote: post #13
nitsky wrote: post #3

Is this good news or bad news for Plaid?

This is bad. Stripe doesn't have to provide the best service here. A lot of companies already use Stripe making the barrier to trying this out very low. Likewise for startups, if you're already trying out Stripe billing for your MVP you're more likely to use another Stripe product than to try out Plaid.

I'd agree. A startup looking to use Stripe Atlas now has access to this for standing up their services? Plaid is basically disqualified from the start, given how cohesive the Stripe platform is.

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#19

Post by zinekeller »

rglover wrote: post #6
zinekeller wrote: post #4

Question: are US banking really this dysfunctional? Where I'm from, a bank consortium already provided unified login services (while banks still have their own websites, as a merchant you only need to integrate the consortium-provided APIs rather than using Plaid) simplifying things.

Yes. Some banks still run COBOL behind the scenes here.

... and I'm pretty sure a majority of banks here still runs COBOL, but it didn't stop them creating a consortium and simplifying things!

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#20

Post by quadcore »

haswell wrote: post #11
rglover wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Some banks still run COBOL behind the scenes here.

For some systems, this is arguably a feature. Banks are rightly cautious about touching core transaction processing systems, systems that cost millions per minute when down. But the use of COBOL generally doesn’t extend to the consumer facing product, or the APIs that support those consumer facing experiences. Banks may be backwards, but the use of older languages is not one of the primary reasons.

It makes me trust them more when they use old software that I never got to complain about.
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