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Increase: Banking API

increase.com

121–130 of 305 posts

Re: Increase: Banking API

#121
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is one of the most unfortunate memes that people for some reason still continue to share. Think about what it teaches children when they hear it? What kind of a world view does it instill? By saying the phrase you are explicitly communicating the idea that it is (at least is some sense) better to not do good deeds.

Search for “woman murdered while helping motorist”. There are too many evil people to willfully ignore the dangers of helping others. You should always, always be aware of the risks you’re putting yourself in any situation. In life, in work, in family, it doesn’t matter. And yes, that’s worth teaching children.

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.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#123
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…

Is a payroll company not an option? I'm not from the US but presumably there are companies that can do this for you at a relatively low cost per employee?

Re: Increase: Banking API

#125
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…

That's silly. You could just as easily to the same thing with checks, or even cards.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#126
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…

How do the launderers have access to thousands of accounts? And why wouldn't the actual owners of the accounts report the transactions?

Re: Increase: Banking API

#128
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No good deed does unpunished.

I think this is one of the most unfortunate memes that people for some reason still continue to share. Think about what it teaches children when they hear it? What kind of a world view does it instill? By saying the phrase you are explicitly communicating the idea that it is (at least is some sense) better to not do good deeds.

Won't somebody think of the children?! ;)

Re: Increase: Banking API

#129
post #68
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Submitted title was "Increase: Become your own bank". Since that seems to be a bit confusing and I don't see that text on the page, I've reverted the title to what the page says.

Yeah it's one of those things where it's not technically correct, but it's probably correct from the user's point of view. Customers of Increase will look a lot like a bank to an end user, but they'll be 2 layers removed from the actual bank, and everything they do will mention the actual bank's name on it for FDIC/regulatory purposes.

FWIW, you won't be allowed to advertise yourself as a bank either.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would happen if you took them to small claims court?

Not really worth the 2 days off work it would take (1 to learn the necessary law/rules/procedures, and one to actually attend court).... Although if I'm bored in the future I might.

I heard of a case where a person did this and won their claim in small claims court, the defendant (I think it was Verizon?) never showed up.

They got a default judgement, but still couldn't actually collect the amount owed.

So they ended up filing a foreclosure on the actual building - and it worked! The foreclosure went through, and the company almost lost their brick and mortar store.

Took years for the process, but it was nice to see that the courts can and will defend an individual. This all took place in TX IIRC.

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