Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Teller – API for your bank account

blog.teller.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 282 posts

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#141

Post by EpicEng »

diggernet wrote: post #120
EpicEng wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd likely be opening themselves up to huge liability if they did that though.

Far better to leave their users open to huge liability instead, eh?

From a business perspective? Yes. If you go out of business it's game over, and it's unreasonable to expect them to provide legal advice.

That said, I don't think the business model on display here is tenable at all and I don't think it will be successful. I certainly wouldn't sign on for this, way too risky.

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#142

Post by realityking »

rodgerd wrote: post #123
sparkling wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> german-language-only Ah the horror. Last week it was bleating that German laws are written in German, this week it's bleating that German bank documentation is written in German.

Got a link to the one about German laws? Sounds entertaining ;)

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#143

Post by anthuswilliams »

dbbk wrote: post #125
sjtgraham wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your feedback. We developed TAuth to provide attribution and non-repudiation for exactly this kind of situation. I personally take security very seriously such that launching our product has taken longer because designing and implementing a system worthy of performing financial transactions on behalf of others is a serious undertaking. Our terms are comparable to the incumbent "screen-scrapers" in the mark…

Is there much desire for moving money via API though? Seems like it would expose you to massive risk for little reward.

Oh my, I have thought about this a lot, and I firmly believe that there is. Sorry for the ensuing wall of text!

Right now I pay for several online services, a gym membership, insurance, a student loan, a mortgage, and an auto loan. Every one of these companies has authorization to pull money from my account each month. They all pay their payment processor a significant sum of money in exchange for the processor running the payments and shouldering the risk of the bank not honoring them.

With an API, I could stop relying on this "pull" model and start using a "push" model instead. Companies get my money only when I explicitly send it to them. I could schedule a payment to go out every month for services I want instead of allowing arbitrary vendors to charge my card (banks do have a partial stab at this in the form of bill-pay, but it tends to be pretty bad).

Presumably since the risk of fraud is lower since I authorized the payment with my RSA key, merchants could pay lower fees to their payment processors.

Now, I'm a little atypical, because I know how to program so I could use the API without help. But I know many people who would certainly take advantages of services built on top of an API like this.

Think of all the people in your life who have accidentally continued paying for something they no longer wanted due to the vendor "mistakenly" continuing to charge their card. Or scummy negative-option marketing companies which loudly tout a free product or service and then continue to charge your card thanks to some tiny section in their terms of service.

The possibilities get better too. You could have budgeting apps that don't let you spend more than $X per month for video games, but still allow you to buy groceries. You could give your children an authorized card with a per-month maximum but still allow them to pay for an Uber home if it's after 9 pm.

I really think this sort of thing would be a massive boon to people and society, and it's unfortunate that banks (in America) are fighting so hard to prevent it.

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#144

Post by cbcoutinho »

kuschku wrote: post #90
sparkling wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There are no official client libraries, no minimal examples, different banks only support certain versions etc. etc. etc. Sounds just like any other API, from most REST APIs to messengers. HBCI is a lot better designed, and a lot easier to work with than the many different messengers that exist on phones nowadays. Everything is documented, everything is specified, and you have a stable API. Try getting something li…

What do you mean English being the lingua franca is not a good thing? Do you mean it's bad, or it just is what it is? I think there's benefit to having a universal language, but it doesn't have to be English...

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#145

Post by kuschku »

cbcoutinho wrote: post #144
kuschku wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no official client libraries, no minimal examples, different banks only support certain versions etc. etc. etc. Sounds just like any other API, from most REST APIs to messengers. HBCI is a lot better designed, and a lot easier to work with than the many different messengers that exist on phones nowadays. Everything is documented, everything is specified, and you have a stable API. Try getting something li…

What do you mean English being the lingua franca is not a good thing? Do you mean it's bad, or it just is what it is? I think there's benefit to having a universal language, but it doesn't have to be English...

A lingua franca's ideal should be to be easy to learn, able to express lots of things. English is easy to start with, but hard to master, and its expressiveness isn't ideal either, often having to import words from other languages where english has no word for a concept itself.

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#146

Post by cbcoutinho »

cikey wrote: post #116

Am i the only one that would never trust a completely unknown third party with my bank account? I like the idea, but i would never use this as a service on the internet.

There will be early adopters who take on this new tech and show the rest of us the possibilities. Just because someone reads HN doesn't mean they need to jump on the band wagon

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#148

Post by germanier »

skrebbel wrote: post #50

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)

Unfortunately the Bunq API requires a fixed IP address which means I can't use it with my non-cloud banking software from my (dynamic IP) home connection.

Re: Teller – API for your bank account

#149

Post by toomanybeersies »

rodgerd wrote: post #123
sparkling wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> german-language-only Ah the horror. Last week it was bleating that German laws are written in German, this week it's bleating that German bank documentation is written in German.

English is the working language of software development, so it does make a degree of sense to bemoan the fact that the API documentation is only available in German.
Post reply on HN