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Increase: Banking API

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Re: Increase: Banking API

#201

Post by [deleted] »

londons_explore wrote: post #94
jjcm wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A part of me really wants you to check in with them every year, to see how long they can claim they're "still investigating" for. This is great insight though re: money laundering. Something I'd have never expected would be the result of an API.

Don't worry... I do... The guy assigned to my case retired. As did the next guy. And now there is a lady assigned to the case, but she has been out of the office for all of the last 3 years... Every time I call, I get told they can't discuss cases over the phone, but that they will send me a paper letter as an update... And it isn't a template letter either... But it always just says I need to keep waiting and there…

[deleted]

Re: Increase: Banking API

#202

Post by Jugurtha »

hahajk wrote: post #198
sofixa wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional banks have literally decades of legacy to deal with which drags them down. Many neobanks have shown that it's possible to provide a better and cheaper service when you start from scratch. A few examples of features neobanks i use provide that traditional banks don't have - virtual cards on the fly, for free; SEPA Instant for free; Open API; smart dynamic budgeting and expense sharing.

I learned (almost) the hard way how important legacy features are. For me it was buying a house and realizing that you must be able to wire money. When the stakes were high, Varo failed me (they promised they could do it, but on the day I needed it they refused) and I had to scramble at my traditional bank to make the payment in time to avoid $20k on penalties. Other than the most important transaction of my life, th…

>Other than the most important transaction of my life, though, they've been great!

I don't know Varo but would you imagine continuing using them for other transactions and using the traditional bank for traditional purchases (house, etc.) After all, people don't go through the most important transaction of their life frequently.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#203

Post by [deleted] »

geraldwhen wrote: post #186
londons_explore wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes you get something positive out of helping a stranger too... A new friend, a favour in return, or simply experience of doing something new/different. As long as the positives outweigh the dangers, it's worth doing.

The potential dangers are death in the examples I gave. The first rule of investing is avoid ruin. We only get chance at life, so what happens on average isn’t meaningful. We have to guard against outlier events. Strangers should be distrusted by default, which is a lesson taught to children. It shocks me that some adults forget something so simple. This applies to teachers, cops, and anyone else you can think of. Tr…

[deleted]

Re: Increase: Banking API

#204

Post by chocolatkey »

mousetree wrote: post #166
chocolatkey wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are not employees, they're freelancers from all around the world.

Even so, surely must be an equivalent of a payroll company that can make all these payments for you? We use Deel and upwork for our freelancers

I think the difference is that the freelancers in our business can be paid very different amounts in a month, from ~$10-5000 in range. Deel is probably fine for you with what you're paying freelancers with its price, but imagine we have a freelancer only do, let's say, $30 worth of work in a month. Deel's cheapest plan is $49/mo. That is more than we're paying the FL! If you're paying the FL e.g. $3000/mo it's worth your money, but for us this would be a 163% fee. And with 50+ freelancers, that's at least ~$2.5k per month. At that price I might as well hire someone to click the buttons for me.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#206

Post by chocolatkey »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #108
chocolatkey wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payoneer is one of the options we use to pay freelancers, in fact many of them quite like it, but for the freelancers' sake, I prefer 100% free methods like Zelle or ACH where possible because you have to pay a fee to take money out of payoneer you receive. At least it's better than paypal

Is TransferWise an option?

I'm considering it for foreign payments, but what I'm looking for is really a good API for ACH, Wire etc. because different freelancers want to use different payment methods. Honestly if Mercury (which we have an account with) would just let us do International Wires through their API it would already make life easier, but for whatever reason they only condone ACH transfers through their API (even though the web UI uses an API for wires...). Even then though, I still have to deal with other freelancers who want to use another payment method. That's why I'm looking for the most complete service out there in terms of financial system integration. The OP's service looks appealing to me because it says "ACH transfers", "Wire transfers", and "Real-Time Payments". That covers quite a portion of what freelancers want, unlike e.g. Wise, which is a single method. I'll keep doing my research for now.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#208

Post by Clent »

lisper wrote: post #173
jrockway wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess credit and undos smooth over most of the problems.

Yes, that certainly helps a lot, but I'm pretty sure that would crumble under certain not-terribly-difficult-to-execute attacks. The happy fact of the matter is that the vast majority of actors in the economy seem to be pretty well-behaved. The scary thing is that the system seems to depend on this.

Sounds like bitcoin's 51% attack issues.

Only I'm guessing it doesn't take half as much to create crumble the banking system.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#209

Post by hattmall »

londons_explore wrote: post #92
JohnFen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know what makes money laundering super easy... a banking API so you can split the million dollars you want to launder into 1 million 1 dollar payments. That would be noticed. It's called "structuring" and is itself illegal. Banks watch for this stuff.

Yes, but when your script splits money into random amounts and puts things like "pizza money", "rent" and "happy birthday" into the reference field, across thousands of accounts, most of whom also have a real user doing real transactions intermingled, suddenly it gets a lot harder for the bank to filter. The bank typically has a rather simplistic set of rules to decide to investigate transactions (because they need t…

I still don't understand how this facilitates money laundering? You send small amounts to a bunch of accounts and then what exactly?

What is the source of the funds to launder and how/why is it already in the bank?

Re: Increase: Banking API

#210

Post by python273 »

chocolatkey wrote: post #32
sv123 wrote: post #8

Looks cool, but having trouble wrapping my head around a potential use case for this.

I have a real-life scenario that applies to my business: we employee 50+ freelancers ee pay every month. I dread when it comes time to pay them, because I have to log into multiple bank account and manually send each transfer using clunky web UIs. I am just copy-pasting all this data from a spreadsheet where it's already been verified. If I could automate payments to a sizeable portion of the freelancers, it would sa…

I think it's possible to automate it with a browser extension or something like Selenium
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