Nordigen: API aggregator to European banks • Hacker News Board

Re: Nordigen: API aggregator to European banks

#11

Post by andruby » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 11:35 AM UTC

Gys wrote: post #10

andruby wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "open finance" mean in this context? I have the same desire as OP to access my own data. I want to build a tool to track my assets. Maybe it's worth building this as open source. Would that be considered "open finance"?

The access to my bank’s PSD2 API is only possible for authorized companies. I assume other banks require the same. They do not want to deal with individuals.

I know. As a dev, I don't like it, but I understand the bank's attitude. That's why individuals will need an intermediary, such as Nordigen (or Tink, Plaid, Truelayer, Ponto)

Re: Nordigen: API aggregator to European banks

#12

Post by monkeydust » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 11:38 AM UTC

vesinisa wrote: post #9

List of supported banks: https://airtable.com/shrX4uBtNLnsPxSih/tblyRj2FTQoXq9Qmu A very impressive list! Having worked in the sector I can only begin to imagine the monumentality of this integration task. I however see that some banks are still missing. How do you deal with those? After all, PSD2 is supposed to give access to all EU banks. Have you encountered any resistance where e.g. banks refuse to open the APIs…

Why isn't your coverage easily discoverable on your website?

Re: Nordigen: API aggregator to European banks

#13

Post by acatton » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 11:41 AM UTC

maverwa wrote: post #3

I'd really like to have a read-only API that is accessible for personal projects to be able to retrieve my own transaction history. Sadly with PSD2 that is (afaik) impossible, or at least pretty close to impossible. Things like this (nordigen) might "solve" the problem by replacing it with a bigger one: now nordigen (or someone else) has access to all this transaction data and is going to leak it somewhere. I get why…

Take a look at https://woob.tech. In a nutshell, it is a bunch of open source python modules which allows you to scrape websites as a unified API. (i.e "bank", "classified ads", "recipes", etc.)

They mostly cover European (especially French, since the original author is French) banks. But they have some US ones.

Re: Nordigen: API aggregator to European banks

#14

Post by Deathmax » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 11:46 AM UTC

alexchamberlain wrote: post #4

maverwa wrote: post #3

I'd really like to have a read-only API that is accessible for personal projects to be able to retrieve my own transaction history. Sadly with PSD2 that is (afaik) impossible, or at least pretty close to impossible. Things like this (nordigen) might "solve" the problem by replacing it with a bigger one: now nordigen (or someone else) has access to all this transaction data and is going to leak it somewhere. I get why…

I think some banks do offer restricted keys that only allow you to access your own accounts - I think Starling in the UK does this; Monzo used to too, but I'm not sure if that's the Open Banking API, or just another API.

Starling[1] and Monzo[2] have their own APIs accessible to end users which are not Open Banking[3]. Monzo has a separate set of OB APIs and AFAIK Starling doesn't have an OB API as only the big, high-street UK banks (HSBC, Barclays, RBS, Santander, Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish Bank, Danske, Lloyds, Nationwide) were forced to implement the OB spec.

[1]: https://developer.starlingbank.com/

[2]: https://docs.monzo.com/

[3]: https://openbanking.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DZ/pages/16385...

Re: Nordigen: API aggregator to European banks

#15

Post by pbronez » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 11:55 AM UTC

acatton wrote: post #13

maverwa wrote: post #3

I'd really like to have a read-only API that is accessible for personal projects to be able to retrieve my own transaction history. Sadly with PSD2 that is (afaik) impossible, or at least pretty close to impossible. Things like this (nordigen) might "solve" the problem by replacing it with a bigger one: now nordigen (or someone else) has access to all this transaction data and is going to leak it somewhere. I get why…

Take a look at https://woob.tech . In a nutshell, it is a bunch of open source python modules which allows you to scrape websites as a unified API. (i.e "bank", "classified ads", "recipes", etc.) They mostly cover European (especially French, since the original author is French) banks. But they have some US ones.

Nice to see they renamed that project. The new name is more approachable.

Re: Nordigen: API aggregator to European banks

#16

Post by vesinisa » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 11:56 AM UTC

monkeydust wrote: post #12

vesinisa wrote: post #9

List of supported banks: https://airtable.com/shrX4uBtNLnsPxSih/tblyRj2FTQoXq9Qmu A very impressive list! Having worked in the sector I can only begin to imagine the monumentality of this integration task. I however see that some banks are still missing. How do you deal with those? After all, PSD2 is supposed to give access to all EU banks. Have you encountered any resistance where e.g. banks refuse to open the APIs…

Why isn't your coverage easily discoverable on your website?

That would indeed be a good change, since it's such an impressive list. It's now available only via one well-hidden link in the API docs: https://nordigen.com/en/account_information_documenation/api...

Re: Nordigen: API aggregator to European banks

#17

Post by marbu » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 12:04 PM UTC

maverwa wrote: post #3

I'd really like to have a read-only API that is accessible for personal projects to be able to retrieve my own transaction history. Sadly with PSD2 that is (afaik) impossible, or at least pretty close to impossible. Things like this (nordigen) might "solve" the problem by replacing it with a bigger one: now nordigen (or someone else) has access to all this transaction data and is going to leak it somewhere. I get why…

My bank fio.cz provides it's own user rest api, so that before you create an api access key, you can select which accounts it applies to and if it's read only access or not. I don't understand why there aren't more banks doing something like this. Btw the bank also offers PSD2, but I haven't looked into that so far, and I'm not sure if it's actually directly useful for a client. https://www.fio.cz/bank-services/internetbanking-api

Re: Nordigen: API aggregator to European banks

#18

Post by rhn_mk1 » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 12:04 PM UTC

maverwa wrote: post #3

I'd really like to have a read-only API that is accessible for personal projects to be able to retrieve my own transaction history. Sadly with PSD2 that is (afaik) impossible, or at least pretty close to impossible. Things like this (nordigen) might "solve" the problem by replacing it with a bigger one: now nordigen (or someone else) has access to all this transaction data and is going to leak it somewhere. I get why…

What makes it impossible in PSD2? The python-fints library can fetch available transaction history for supported banks no problem.

https://github.com/raphaelm/python-fints

https://python-fints.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reading.html#r...

Re: Nordigen: API aggregator to European banks

#19

Post by vesinisa » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 12:09 PM UTC

maverwa wrote: post #3

I'd really like to have a read-only API that is accessible for personal projects to be able to retrieve my own transaction history. Sadly with PSD2 that is (afaik) impossible, or at least pretty close to impossible. Things like this (nordigen) might "solve" the problem by replacing it with a bigger one: now nordigen (or someone else) has access to all this transaction data and is going to leak it somewhere. I get why…

> now nordigen (or someone else) has access to all this transaction data and is going to leak it somewhere.

You must of course be able to trust the 3rd party, Nordigen in this case. But I don't think their operational license even allows storing your financial data - only proxying requests between you and the bank. So only your bank is even allowed to store your financial data.

But of course you need to be able to trust that Nordigen indeed does not store and abuse your financial data -- just like you need to be able to trust your bank! Bear in mind though that Nordigen is supervised by the same financial regulation authority as your own bank, and if they were caught doing anything shady they would face very serious consequences - not to even speak of staining their reputation, which would be ruinous for a small startup.

tl;dr: Banking is ultimately about trust, and nothing is ever perfect.

Re: Nordigen: API aggregator to European banks

#20

Post by elfrinjo » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 12:17 PM UTC

maverwa wrote: post #3

I'd really like to have a read-only API that is accessible for personal projects to be able to retrieve my own transaction history. Sadly with PSD2 that is (afaik) impossible, or at least pretty close to impossible. Things like this (nordigen) might "solve" the problem by replacing it with a bigger one: now nordigen (or someone else) has access to all this transaction data and is going to leak it somewhere. I get why…

It is rally terrible that such a service is actually necessary... PSD2 was a chance to create a standard api for everyone including customers. I still cannot understand how they managed to f it up by limiting access to "trusted companies"