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Increase: Banking API

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Re: Increase: Banking API

#131

Post by chocolatkey »

pen2l wrote: post #86
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

Zelle takes a considerable percentage cut for non-personal transactions. Do you make use of Payoneer API for payouts? How do you find it?

I use Zelle through the BoA small business account's web interface, there is no charge. I tried getting Zelle API access through US Bank but they never replied so I'm stuck with BoA web.

Payoneer is really cagey about how you unlock better features, our account got upgraded to VIP though because we pay a lot through it. We still use their interface, maybe I'll figure out how to get their API someday

Re: Increase: Banking API

#132

Post by rutierut »

redox99 wrote: post #93
londons_explore wrote: post #71

I made an API for a bank... I was a third party and made the API by screen scraping their webUI. I sent their devs a link and initially there were positive messages going back and forth. The API allowed you to see balance, transaction history, and make payments. Before long, the API got quite popular, and lots of people were using it to make lots of payments automatically. You know what makes money laundering super e…

I hate to be "that guy", but this is why I hate banks and like crypto. Both the fact that crypto is obviously trivial to automate, and that banks can unilaterally ban you and steal your money.

It's pretty easy to not "ban you and steal your money" when you're not required/able to prevent people from laundering money/evading taxes.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#133

Post by chocolatkey »

adventured wrote: post #114
chocolatkey wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely different. Stripe/Braintree are ways to charge customers on their credit/debit card on your website, completely unwieldy for paying freelancers. You'd have to have freelancers set up Stripe merchant accounts and receive card payments, that would be very weird and broken use case, especially considering Stripe's fees. I can send a freelancer an ACH transfer for $0, why would I want to pay 3+%? As fo…

> Stripe/Braintree are ways to charge customers on their credit/debit card on your website Stripe has a banking as a service segment now - https://stripe.com/treasury

That looks reasonable, having worked with Stripe's APIs before I know that part would at least be nice. But I am worried about pricing with the "contact sales". If they charged per transfer initiated that would be a dealbreaker.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#134

Post by quickthrower2 »

jtbayly wrote: post #126
londons_explore wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The api seems to let you create new accounts fairly easily. Seems odd to me as the API provider is the bank. Based on KYC I presume they think they are all splits of the same account holder?

I learned the other day that the name on account means shit, because scammers often give $account_details + $catfish_name and receive the money to $bank_details + $real_name.

I don’t see how splitting to 1000 transactions and sending money to yourself helps with money laundering or undercover money sending.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#135

Post by MalcolmDwyer »

b8ZLPMRFnnfID4M wrote: post #125
londons_explore wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Millions of checks or millions of cards is "just as easy" as millions of API calls?

Re: Increase: Banking API

#136

Post by londons_explore »

jtbayly wrote: post #126
londons_explore wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You normally start an ad campaign across facebook offering discount beauty products but you need to 'enable' this 'security software' onto your bank account...

Re: Increase: Banking API

#137

Post by alberth »

> “Our API faithfully exposes the data and capabilities of the Federal Reserve, Visa, The Clearing House, depository networks, and accounting tools. It’s lovingly boring and exceptionally powerful.”

Two questions:

1. How is this different than Open Banking?

2. Why is Visa referenced / why isn’t Mastercard included? (Is it because Mastercard owns Finicity, and Open Banking service)

Re: Increase: Banking API

#138

Post by chocolatkey »

mousetree wrote: post #123
chocolatkey wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Re: Increase: Banking API

#139

Post by zachthewf »

mousetree wrote: post #107
zachthewf wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a B2B2C product (sold to businesses that are building consumer fintech products). There are a bunch of neobank fintech startups whose offering is "Banking for X", where X is some segment of the population with specific needs that are not well served by traditional banks. (Here for example is X = "Spanish speakers in the US".) [0] To build a startup like that, you need to build a product layer on top of a banking…

Would love to chat with you about your experience with Galileo. About two years back we decided to NOT go with Galileo and went with another provider. Absolute trash too and now we're going to go looking around again - which at our current scale is not going to be pleasant. Would be great to trade notes (email in my profile).

Funnily enough the company I worked at also switched to Galileo from another provider that was even worse.

Shooting you an email now.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#140

Post by redavni »

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…

You need to send a request in writing.
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