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Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

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Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#151

Post by martinald »

avianlyric wrote: post #146
8fingerlouie wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The UK on the other hand has actively encouraged new banks and new tech. It’s had things like instant, free, payments between personal accounts for almost two decades. Contactless transactions for at least a decade, mobile banking for decades, and government mandated banking API for almost 5 years. I think most of those things are EU initiatives, which the UK was a member of at the time. At least we have all of the…

It’s a mix. Many of these innovations came into existence before their EU counterparts. Faster payments, for example, is a completely different system to instant SWIFT payments which most of the EU uses. Having said that, Denmark is another notable country for its innovation financial systems, ahead of the U.S., many of its EU neighbours and in some areas ahead of the UK. But the UK has always had a vibrant and innov…

Instant SEPA, not SWIFT.

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#152

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

varispeed wrote: post #13
yuumei wrote: post #6

Unfortunately in the UK a bank can (and do) freeze your account with no reason for up to 2 years without any recourse or access to funds. With API access you risk your money being frozen due to automatic fraud detection. The government have given up policing of finance to banks and they take the least risky options

These "challenger" banks are a gimmick. Friend of mine recently tried to set up an account for his new business and all "challengers" refused a business account, they were slow to respond and disinterested in helping. Eventually he set up with a high street bank, but the whole thing took over a month, which is ridiculous.

That wasn't my experience.

I set up an account with HSBC about seven years go, and they were a nightmare. It took over a month to open the account, and everything had to be done in branch. Also, HSBC in the UK is not the same HSBC in other countries. I once had to fly back to London from Athens just to "pop in to my local branch" for some uninteresting bureaucratic process.

I closed that account and switched to Tide. It took me like 15 minutes to open the account online.

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#153

Post by arohner »

kiitos wrote: post #71

> The problem right now is that there’s no way to control the behavior of the underlying Java threading libraries, nio, and writing to disk. Nor will there ever be, just by the nature of those systems. You can't get deterministic execution from a system that uses non-deterministic request ordering, task scheduling, etc. -- which is what you get if you always use multiple OS threads, or spawn multiple discrete process…

It is a tall order, but but it's doable. The most important thing is to reduce the surface area of your application. Our business logic is almost entirely pure. The 'procs' have no side effects, except for things that happen on the other side of a clojure protocol (java interface). That means all side effects can be stubbed out during tests.

Our "user" code has no access to threading libraries. Threading happens in "kernel" code.

Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fFDFbi3toc for a good example of how this has already been done in practice.

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#154

Post by n41r0j »

hknmtt wrote: post #135

Is there EU alternative? I mean bank that has API that looks like it was made in the 21st century? Except Wise and Revolut.

In the Netherlands there is bunq, with a proper API just like Griffin is implementing right now. Been around for years!

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#155

Post by silversmith »

blibble wrote: post #143
8fingerlouie wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The UK on the other hand has actively encouraged new banks and new tech. It’s had things like instant, free, payments between personal accounts for almost two decades. Contactless transactions for at least a decade, mobile banking for decades, and government mandated banking API for almost 5 years. I think most of those things are EU initiatives, which the UK was a member of at the time. At least we have all of the…

> I think most of those things are EU initiatives no, only the mandated banking API (which is impossible to get access to if you're a startup or an individual)

Counter-anecdote: my brother is building a startup (cashflow forecasting tool, check out https://tailwindapp.eu/) on top of those banking APIs. Granted, he's spent many years in the industry, but as I understand, API access was by far not the hardest part of it.

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#156

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

blibble wrote: post #147
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought we were talking about PSD2, which the European Parliament adopted in 2015. I recall many startups were launched specifically to capitalise on new opportunities provided by PSD2, so I find your comment confusing. What am I missing?

the UK had contactless transactions, free instant payments and mobile banking years before PSD2 (the mostly useless open banking stuff is however due to PSD2)

That appears to be a red herring.

In the article, Griffin is described as:

> Their services allow Fintech businesses to integrate banking features quickly and securely.

So this is about integration with other FinTech businesses, which I think squarely falls under open banking and PSD2.

I'm not sure why you describe PSD2 as "mostly useless". Did you vote for Brexit by any chance?

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#157

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

avianlyric wrote: post #146
8fingerlouie wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The UK on the other hand has actively encouraged new banks and new tech. It’s had things like instant, free, payments between personal accounts for almost two decades. Contactless transactions for at least a decade, mobile banking for decades, and government mandated banking API for almost 5 years. I think most of those things are EU initiatives, which the UK was a member of at the time. At least we have all of the…

It’s a mix. Many of these innovations came into existence before their EU counterparts. Faster payments, for example, is a completely different system to instant SWIFT payments which most of the EU uses. Having said that, Denmark is another notable country for its innovation financial systems, ahead of the U.S., many of its EU neighbours and in some areas ahead of the UK. But the UK has always had a vibrant and innov…

> But the UK has always had a vibrant and innovative financial services sector. Something the EU always had a bit of love-hate relationship with, and something Brexit has seriously damaged.

To be fair, most of the regulations were EU ones, but they were driven by the UK as a member, and they supported them nationally.

Contrast Ireland, which has the same EU regs but is much, much further behind the curve because our regulators focus on different things.

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#158

Post by tmpX7dMeXU »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #115

"We kind of joke that we’re a tech company that happens to have a banking license." This is one of those quotes that can look really bad in hindsight if something goes wrong

I wouldn’t use a bank with this attitude. With a “tech company” label comes a lot of unjustified hubris based on an assumption that one is good at everything just because they write code.

My employer called themselves an education research company that happened to use software to commercialise their findings. It sat a lot better with me and made for better culture in my eyes.

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#159

Post by arohner »

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #10

Its not clear there will be small banks in the US to use this tech in the future. Here's why: 1. Deposit flight. Small banks are struggling to attract deposits at a time when money markets pay considerably more than deposit accounts. 2. Investment scarcity. Small banks are struggling to find places invest deposits where returns are safe, on a reporting adjusted basis. Meaning, small banks invest(ed) in US Treasuries,…

We could in theory bank other banks, but that's not our focus. Our current customers are mostly regulated non-bank financial institutions, E-Money and Client money. As an American analogy, think Square Cash, Venmo, Paypal.

Longer term our aspiration is to also be the business bank for technology companies e.g. Apple or AirBnb or Uber. Currently Goldman is a big player in that space.

Re: Griffin – A fully-regulated, API-driven bank, with Clojure

#160

Post by varispeed »

ehhthing wrote: post #86
varispeed wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that all future fintechs would build on This also sounds awfully like a single point of failure and embodiment of what's wrong with late stage capitalism - where competition is an illusion.

I'm confused by this statement. fintechs aren't just proxies for banks, they're financial products that people want to use. There are plenty of cool and innovative things you can do with just a banking API beyond just creating another bank Sure the costs for any fintech using these products are the same, but they can offer a million different types of products which make them unique.

Then company underpinning those fintech businesses decides to pull the plug and suddenly everyone finds themselves up in a creek without a paddle.
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