31–40 of 45 posts
Are there any challenger banks with an API? I'm not entirely sure what I'd do with one but it seems like a neat idea.
Unfortunately, I think you need to be licensed under the PSD2 even to send money from your own account - you can do things like attaching receipts to transactions to view in the app, or pulling transaction data in real time, though.
Are there any challenger banks with an API? I'm not entirely sure what I'd do with one but it seems like a neat idea.
(I deliberately avoid the word "stable" because everything in this space is still in flux.)
Semantically OB is a bit like OAuth. The end user authorises an OB provider to conduct [some] operations on their bank account, and the OB provider exposes their chosen functionality to the user. Due to the unit economics[ß] it will likely be quite some time before OB for retail customers can take flight.
I would have personally expected that the first uses of OB for retail customers would have been personal accounting services, because those could do with read-only authorisations. But the challenger banks exposed this natively in their apps, adding sufficient friction for third-party services to take hold, and in fact made it such an attractive feature that legacy banks have had to race to implement similar functionality.
ß: Businesses do a lot more transactions than individuals, so the overhead per retail customer remains high.
I think the challenge goes beyond just profitability. I’m currently locked out of my Revolut account due to a bug on their end. There is no telephone support and no in app support until after you are logged in. Apparently you have to contact them via Facebook or Twitter for assistance. They are forever destined to be a toy with this kind of approach to people’s money.
I was locked out of my Revolut account too, for about a day. I was able to chat via messages in-app. But each time I did, the support person asked me to upload photos of supporting documentation to prove my own other bank cards were in my possession, that sort of thing. I duly did so, and then there would be acknowledgement followed by silence at the other end for hours. Eventually the person would log off (their sta…
Are there any challenger banks with an API? I'm not entirely sure what I'd do with one but it seems like a neat idea.
Well, I know for a fact that all of the banks in UK must support open banking. Granted, the functionality is mostly reserved for B2B communications, so in practice you will need to go through a OB provider. These providers [try to] abstract away the differences between individual banks and provide coherent APIs to their customers. (I deliberately avoid the word "stable" because everything in this space is still in fl…
It's more of a read-only way to share your account statement.
I am curious why Transferwise was not mentioned at all...
Are there any challenger banks with an API? I'm not entirely sure what I'd do with one but it seems like a neat idea.
But they cost 9 eur a month, they don't have a serious free tier. Still, I use them because I think their offering is worth what I pay for it.
I think the challenge goes beyond just profitability. I’m currently locked out of my Revolut account due to a bug on their end. There is no telephone support and no in app support until after you are logged in. Apparently you have to contact them via Facebook or Twitter for assistance. They are forever destined to be a toy with this kind of approach to people’s money.
> There is no telephone support and no in app support until after you are logged in. Apparently you have to contact them via Facebook or Twitter for assistance. The legacy banks all seem to be moving to voice-recognition IVR systems which primarily exist to provide the same service as the website/app, but in a more frustrating manner. If I had a problem that could be solved on the website, I wouldn't be calling in th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aren't the accounts insured by government entities like the FDIC in the US?
In the UK current account deposits are insured up to £85k. Northern Rock went pop ~8 years ago and the public did not lose money - the government did though.
Either way, it can't be a good experience to be stranded with no card, no bank account, and the bit of money you had all frozen indefinitely.
always seemed to be lunacy to me, given: - the margins for retail banking were wiped out a long time ago - consumers have been used to free banking for decades (at least in the UK) - near-or-even-below zero interest rates for the last decade (with no signs of this ending) - the "legacy" competition are some of the most well captialised entities on the planet is a "legacy" bank going to pay several billion dollars to…
> is a "legacy" bank going to pay several billion dollars to acquire a nice app with an unprofitable business behind it? I doubt it You’re not buying that though. You’re buying the customer base. Getting another couple of million customers isn’t something to sniff at.
With valuations >billion even for millions of users the acquiror is paying hundreds per customer. I'd be surprised if the economics of that stack up.