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Open Banking and Payments Competition

bitsaboutmoney.com

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Re: Open Banking and Payments Competition

#41

Post by Animats »

omcnoe wrote: post #26
Animats wrote: post #13

Remember the Synapse/Yotta/Evolve collapse.[1] That is what happens when a fintech startup has authority to manipulate customer bank accounts but is not financially strong enough to handle problems. [1] https://apnews.com/article/synapse-evolve-bank-fintech-accou...

To be clear, the Synapse case is not clearly a financial strength issue in the sense that they took risks with customer funds, but rather an extremely serious record keeping/accounting/auditing one. Synapse was supposed to be nothing more than a "dumb pipe" between customers, fintechs, and underlying traditional bank accounts.

That's the problem with those things. Who's responsible for plumbing leaks?

A sizable fraction of what bank employees do involves error conditions and fraud. The happy path has been automated for decades. One of the big discoveries when PayPal started up was that they were not in the money transfer business. They were in the fraud prevention business.

Re: Open Banking and Payments Competition

#42

Post by tossandthrow »

toenail wrote: post #23
tossandthrow wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean that you are your won bank? Do you treat your matrass like a bank? Maybe with the pidgin carrier protocol to do money transfers?

I use a decentralized global ledger and can make instantaneous peer to peer payments to anyone on the planet. I'm not just my own bank, I participate in a system that replaces central banks and provides a money that isn't constantly devalued. It's called bitcoin.

Bitcoin can not yet be deemed currency by commonly understood principles for a currency: You can not pay your taxes, it is not a store of value (it is volatile), and it can not generally be used to transact (Good luck getting trader joe accepting bit coins).

So that would not really constitute a bank that stores currency.

(I have nothing on crypto currencies, btw., and if it gives a feeling of agency to use them I applaud it)

Re: Open Banking and Payments Competition

#44

Post by rkomorn »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #43

No mention of how open banking works outside of the US, where (in the UK) bank transfers are basically instantaneous and free, and I can happily retrieve my payments list to my budgeting app.

> and I can happily retrieve my payments list to my budgeting app

Is this a UK thing? I've been searching for something like Mint/Quicken in the EU and haven't found anything worthwhile because there doesn't seem to be a standard for budgeting apps to connect to banks.

Re: Open Banking and Payments Competition

#45

Post by sunaookami »

gethly wrote: post #30

The entire banking industry is the most backwards, outdated and barely functioning sector in the whole world. I have no clue how we have not yet collapsed the financial system via some hack or basic data loss.

As someone working in fintech (in Europe): I agree. People always say "well at least it's tested and works!" but fintech is pure bullshittery. We wrap shiny new apps over 30 year old legacy systems written in C++ and bank employees need to constantly correct data manually. I know from a bank that has only one employee that knows about the whole system and nobody knows what happens when they retire (is already aged >50). Generally, banks rely on a very small number of (overworked) people that prevent the whole system from collapsing and they will all retire in a few years. Neo-banks and Neo-broker have their own disadvantages (like bad support, etc.) but at least they are forward-thinking.

Everything is also constantly regulated to death (and not the good kind) and banks wait until the very last day (even when regulations were passed at EU-level 6 years (!!) ago) and you then need to rush implementing it in the last month.

After working there for a few years now it's hard to trust any bank. Better not think too hard about it...

Re: Open Banking and Payments Competition

#46

Post by gripfx »

rkomorn wrote: post #44
AndrewDucker wrote: post #43

No mention of how open banking works outside of the US, where (in the UK) bank transfers are basically instantaneous and free, and I can happily retrieve my payments list to my budgeting app.

> and I can happily retrieve my payments list to my budgeting app Is this a UK thing? I've been searching for something like Mint/Quicken in the EU and haven't found anything worthwhile because there doesn't seem to be a standard for budgeting apps to connect to banks.

I use the GoCardless API to pull transactions and balances into a Google Sheet. They have pretty good coverage for UK and EU it looks like [1]

[1] https://developer.gocardless.com/bank-account-data/overview#...

Re: Open Banking and Payments Competition

#48

Post by Kenji »

tossandthrow wrote: post #42
toenail wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a decentralized global ledger and can make instantaneous peer to peer payments to anyone on the planet. I'm not just my own bank, I participate in a system that replaces central banks and provides a money that isn't constantly devalued. It's called bitcoin.

Bitcoin can not yet be deemed currency by commonly understood principles for a currency: You can not pay your taxes, it is not a store of value (it is volatile), and it can not generally be used to transact (Good luck getting trader joe accepting bit coins). So that would not really constitute a bank that stores currency. (I have nothing on crypto currencies, btw., and if it gives a feeling of agency to use them I ap…

Bitcoin is a better store of value than USD. Change my mind.

Re: Open Banking and Payments Competition

#49

Post by immibis »

gethly wrote: post #30

The entire banking industry is the most backwards, outdated and barely functioning sector in the whole world. I have no clue how we have not yet collapsed the financial system via some hack or basic data loss.

We have many times. We've ruined lives and literally killed people over it, but we just accept this is how money works. We couldn't possibly consider changing The System because The System is perfect, all-knowing and benevolent. Trust in The System!

Also there's a bunch of really annoying and expensive processes for rich people to get their money back after an error, so they don't see any problem.

Re: Open Banking and Payments Competition

#50

Post by nicbou »

moi2388 wrote: post #40
nicbou wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was really disappointed by that. I still can't easily retrieve a list of my transactions.

I am very happy with that, because it means the PSD2 providers have their security tested before they are accepted.

Yes, PSD2 is overall an excellent thing. I used to be able to scrape my data with just a username and a password. This is a massive improvement.
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