111–120 of 282 posts
How does it work if not by screen scraping?
Most UK banks require a 2 factor device so probably not. Maybe there is direct access?
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Sure they might find out an App Update was issued in the App Store... but they cannot possibly know what API changes were made without reverse-engineering the API's all over again. Not to mention, once they discover what changed, now this service has to go make the changes on their system... meanwhile that bank doesn't work with this service anymore. So the App is broken for some undefined period of time.
The bank has to deploy their client code to all of their users before they can depreciate the old API. That should give them plenty of buffer time to reverse engineer the changes.
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Removing roaming fees for all European telecom operators was also a something that they had little to gain and everything to lose. But, here we are. From my understanding SEPA is getting implemented. I could see PSD2 following the same path. Some banks will drag their feet, but it is a pandora box situation, as the banks that will implement PSD2 first might get all the apps attention and love, potentially driving new…
Current roaming regulations in the EU are designed with the biggest, transnational players in mind. By subsidizing operations in a less lucrative market using proceeds from other countries, they can bleed smaller national telecoms. They will then proceed to buy them for pennies on the dollar. This will result in less competition down the road, and higher prices for the end user.
So be careful and if you want to have more insight into your finance maybe it's better to digest those apis yourself, libraries should pop out soon if they are not yet available for your bank (in europe anyway).
Somebody told me that 2018 is the deadline for EU banks to provide API access. If that's the case then going through any server side layer managed by somebody is unnecessary and people in general should think twice about every single bank transaction being stored somewhere "there". It gives out a lot of information from your internet provider to your child's creche, holidays habits, income (duh), loan repayments and…
If not, then I think there's still some utility in a service that can normalize that stuff and provide you with a single, consistent interface.
I like the idea, but i would never use this as a service on the internet.
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FinTS (formerly known as HBCI) is horrible and serves as a great example of how not to design a API. The non-machine-readable german-language-only API specification consist of >800 pages spread across various PDFs[1] full of gibberish. There are no official client libraries, no minimal examples, different banks only support certain versions etc. etc. etc. [1] https://www.hbci-zka.de/dokumente/spezifikation_deutsch/fi…
Enterprisey APIs with adoption beat nicely designed APIs without adoption anytime. Besides, that does not explain, why none of the other banks can get their act together. If FinTS is too difficult to implement, how come they are not offering something simpler?
Your conflation of "bad" with "enterprisey" is unfortunate. Also, is it really adoption if different banks only support specific features/versions?
> If FinTS is too difficult to implement, how come they are not offering something simpler?
Well banks aren't really in the business of APIs, are they? Nobody is graduating #2 in their class at Stanford with a CS degree and going to work for a bank as a web developer.
Dutch mobile-only bank Bunq also published their API pretty recently: https://www.bunq.com/en/api Things are starting to not-entirely-suck in retail banking land. (in Europe, at least - not sure about elsewhere)
Teller is not a bank itself though. I believe it started as a wrapper around banks' private APIs, not sure whether that's still the case.
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Would be prudent and indeed consumer friendly if you where to go thru those TOS the banks have in conjunction with your own and provide a simple at a glance list of liability/impact. Reassure people that way and shows, you care and thought this thru beyond saying we recommend reading this and that as people are wary and equally might not understand it. Sure would take time and some effort, but would certainly return…
They'd likely be opening themselves up to huge liability if they did that though.