Ask HN: Sick of your bank? Want to build a open source, non-profit, online bank?

I would be very interested in a bank that is open source, radically transparent, and run for the benefit of the community.

The code for the website, backoffice systems, credit scoring, and fraud detection could be open-sourced and continually improved.

Data on credit decisions would be available to any member to scrutinize and challenge, thus reducing fraudulent or unwise loans and identifying opportunities to expand profitable lending.

The bank's individual loans and investments would be public, perhaps lightly scrubbed of personal identifying information. Regulators, journalists, and motivated individuals could see if sweetheart deals are being made at the expense of the membership or the deposit insurance fund.

The bank could publish a public "blockchain" of transactions similar to Bitcoin so financial statements could be reconciled down to the transaction level. This might make it much more difficult to hide fraud and abuse.

Incidents of fraud and default would be published as they occur. The resulting social pressure should reduce the bank's costs, and the data could be used to improve credit and membership decisions.

Yes, I guess he is starting from 'scratch' but the show aligns really well with your ideas and I think it will help you at least see someone go down that path and what comes up and what you might need to get started. Anyways, check it out, pretty interesting.

Yeah. They have web banking and a mobile app. I can even deposit checks from my phone.

I have to ask though, is this seriously not the case for CU's in Ireland? I think here in the US this is totally common place and nobody would use a CU if they didn't offer these services.

What do you mean by open source? Do you want the banks website to be open source, or all of the back office code that talks to ancient mainframes and proprietary 3rd party applications?

What will draw customers (other then fellow developers) to a bank with open source software?

> I'm not thinking of something like a credit union, rather something quite different

I'd guess from reading the comments that US-style credit unions are not common outside the US.

If you came up with a radical new banking product that has the characteristic of, say, reducing fee income, credit unions might be the best place to launch it. As you can see from other comments, transparency tools probably fit this category.

Generally, however, I think there is a lot of potential in organizations outside the "investor owned corporation" sphere. A co-op ISP, for example.

Anywhere there are perverse incentives for investor owned enterprises there is room for different structures.

Adding open source client software and high transparency in operations for a credit union could provide an incremental improvement over the basic idea of depositor-owned banks. But features like a "social investing profile' if that's what you are getting at, would be applicable to any bank's customers.