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Stripe Financial Connections

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Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#21

Post by ericmay »

rmbyrro wrote: post #16
yohannparis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That was probably the intention but I think that isn't a core reason. It's more about business/tech incentives around these APIs. The industry is more risk-averse, and frankly there isn't necessarily a great business case for doing integrations if you're a big bank because you don't want to be commoditized into "pipes" and then have to compete on low-margin products all the while the middle companies have better margins and skim off the top of you. At least on the consumer side. There's this meme that banks are technologically backwards and all that, and I don't think that is true or a good frame of reference to have. The scale, complexity, regulatory environment, and risk-aversion when something bad happens are far and away more relevant factors than technology is.

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#22

Post by andy_ppp »

gigatexal wrote: post #15
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.

Also every 90 days you have to do some weird dance to keep the apps receiving your data, it never seems to work right and you forget. I would think building a business on such flakey APIs is dubious at best!

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#23

Post by rmbyrro »

ericmay wrote: post #21
rmbyrro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That was probably the intention but I think that isn't a core reason. It's more about business/tech incentives around these APIs. The industry is more risk-averse, and frankly there isn't necessarily a great business case for doing integrations if you're a big bank because you don't want to be commoditized into "pipes" and then have to compete on low-margin products all the while the middle companies have better marg…

I agree, but don't think the original comment deserves down voting. It's an acceptable argument. Might not hold water, though.

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#24

Post by jbverschoor »

gigatexal wrote: post #15
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.

The APIs aren't amazing, and you need to be a financial service provider to access production environment. Aka useless for any startup or person

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#26

Post by transportgo »

The currency and account names used in the demo seems to be localized. I get kr and olanordman (johndoe in the US?) on my Norwegian IP device

If it gets peoples attention like it did mine maybe it’s worth the dev time to implement?

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#27

Post by kareemsabri »

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…

Pretty sure Plaid already has integrated directly with bank's APIs and has been moving away from screen scraping for years.

Plaid's flakiness / reliance on screen scraping is probably that a lot of these banks don't expose APIs / OAuth etc.

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#28

Post by dylan604 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #22
gigatexal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also every 90 days you have to do some weird dance to keep the apps receiving your data, it never seems to work right and you forget. I would think building a business on such flakey APIs is dubious at best!

To fight that flakey situation of bad APIs, one decides to build a business based on flakey screen scraping instead? With financial information? What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#29

Post by zachperret »

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…

Plaid founder here. Stripe does not integrate with any bank API's directly (AFAICT). They wrap two aggregators, MX and Finicity to build this product. (Also, not sure what MX products they are using, but MX itself is an aggregator of aggregators, including others such as Yodlee.)

On pricing, Stripe's listed rates are 30-200% higher than Plaid rates (perhaps due to high vendor costs). That said, if anyone does have feedback on where Plaid pricing is prohibiting new use cases, we'd love to hear! I'm zach at plaid if folks would like to discuss.

Re: Stripe Financial Connections

#30

Post by dylan604 »

transportgo wrote: post #26

The currency and account names used in the demo seems to be localized. I get kr and olanordman (johndoe in the US?) on my Norwegian IP device If it gets peoples attention like it did mine maybe it’s worth the dev time to implement?

demo names as a service. you send your locale, we send you the localized john/jane doe names and other info like 123 Main St and 555-1212 type data.
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