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

Increase: Banking API

increase.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 305 posts

Re: Increase: Banking API

#161

Post by yebyen »

monocasa wrote: post #152
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…

Meanwhile the USAA app told me one time that the amount I was trying to move one time would be subject to additional regulations and suggested breaking breaking up the transfer. It felt like if Clippy had an addon to it's expert system from Saul.

Suggested breaking up the transfer to evade regs? Isn't that felony structuring? LOL

Re: Increase: Banking API

#162

Post by sverhagen »

c7b wrote: post #12

It sounds cool, but I don't fully understand: is this a fully-fledged US bank (with a banking license, FDIC insurance, audited,...) that allows you to do all banking transactions through an API, or is this a framework that you can use if you are already a bank to expose all your transactions through an API, or something else?

There's always a real bank backing this, and they are going to throw up requirements. Seems Increase is calling them "partner banks" (Blue Ridge, First Internet). If you're using this API, presumably you would have to get KYB'd, give insight into your books, and commit to certain minimum volumes. This is not Stripe. But maybe I'm wrong (very possible).

Re: Increase: Banking API

#163

Post by yboris »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #95
yboris wrote: 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.

I don't think people are out there teaching kids to live their lives by this mantra. It's not intended to be a life philosophy, more of a bleak and darkly humorous observation. Sure, it's not always true, but it sure does feel like it sometimes. Kind of like "life's a bitch, and then you die", it's not meant to be taken too seriously.

That's the thing - you don't have to intend to teach kids anything, they just pick up on the stuff you say.

I know this isn't a forum where we are endangering children by writing stuff like this, but it strikes me as a bizarre sentiment to express (of all the things one can say in an unfortunate situation - to choose summarize the whole scenario with that sentence).

Re: Increase: Banking API

#165

Post by meltedcapacitor »

iancmceachern wrote: post #5
randomcatuser wrote: post #2

I'm a bit confused about why one would want to do this! If you become your own bank, what are the pieces you have to do yourself? (I imagine things like fraud?)

It seems like a great tool for financial fraud, phising schemes, laundering. What non-nefarious uses would it have?

It's white-label banking, allows non-bank businesses to have a bank account product with their name on it, confusing everybody in the process. It's naff but not nefarious.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#166

Post by mousetree »

chocolatkey wrote: post #138
mousetree wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even so, surely must be an equivalent of a payroll company that can make all these payments for you? We use Deel and upwork for our freelancers

Re: Increase: Banking API

#167

Post by Reason077 »

londons_explore wrote: post #146
Reason077 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about Monzo specifically, but all the major UK banks are required by the UK regulators to provide standard open banking APIs: https://www.openbanking.org.uk In practice this means that any UK financial app that supports open banking should be able to connect to an account at any UK bank that implements open banking.

Open banking is really just an automated way to view your statement. It doesn't allow sending money to someone, creating a new bank account, closing an account, changing your email or postal address, setting up a pension or credit card, or any of the other actions you might want to do at your bank.

Transaction data via API is much more than just viewing a statement. Being able to access this in a standardised way is a huge win for all sorts of financial and accounting apps, as well as certain specialised industries (credit checking, rental agents, etc)

And open banking does support "sending money to someone" (variable recurring payments), subject of course to some security constraints. You wouldn't want to just let every random app that you let access your bank account initiate any transaction it wanted without an additional authorisation step, would you?

Everything else you mention is a pretty infrequent and specialised transaction and the benefit to having an API would be minimal. (OK, I could see value in an app that automatically updated your address etc with every company you have a relationship with, but that would require a common API across many industries, not just banking)

Re: Increase: Banking API

#168

Post by bilekas »

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…

> made the API by screen scraping their webUI.

Had fun ideas of improving the finance sector with ideas like this, that for any other industry would be at worst : 'TODO's to fix later.

Finance sector taught me a lot about security, but also about standards.

Standards are a real PITA to code for, from HTTP to PCI payment compliance. They're so worth it in the end though.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#169

Post by lisper »

mike_d wrote: post #158
lisper wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, you got off easy. I spent six years of actual work learning this lesson the hard way back in 2006-2012. In retrospect, I should have paid a lot more attention when Patric Collison told me he was spending his days reading up banking regulations. Eh, too boring, I thought, what could possibly be in there that a little code couldn't paper over? That mistake cost me the opportunity to be an early hire at Stripe.

Yup. This is why every attempt to provide developers better access to banking/finance is doomed to fail. Even if you buy your own bank charter, you are still subject to someone elses rules. Your customers want to be innovative and do things they can't easily do today. On the other side is your financial network that has shut down the three previous attempts to do that exact thing because it causes a random transactio…

I'm am often amazed that the entire world financial system hasn't collapsed yet, considering what I now know about how it is put together.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#170

Post by jrockway »

lisper wrote: post #169
mike_d wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. This is why every attempt to provide developers better access to banking/finance is doomed to fail. Even if you buy your own bank charter, you are still subject to someone elses rules. Your customers want to be innovative and do things they can't easily do today. On the other side is your financial network that has shut down the three previous attempts to do that exact thing because it causes a random transactio…

I'm am often amazed that the entire world financial system hasn't collapsed yet, considering what I now know about how it is put together.

I guess credit and undos smooth over most of the problems.
Post reply on HN