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

51–60 of 305 posts

Re: Increase: Banking API

#51

Post by Shindi »

rthomas6 wrote: post #36

Is there any service like this for individuals? Specifically, I want to be able to open and close checking accounts at will with different card numbers, with different spending limits. The purpose would be to serve as an envelope system and budgeting tool.

If you're an enterprising individuals you can "kinda" do this but it's not easy and definitely 100% a headache.

Neobanks sometimes use this notion of a virtual bank account. My understanding is that it's a single FDIC insured account that they subdivide using their own ledger.

For cards, you can use Stripe Treasury or Lithic to issue your own virtual cards and their dev limits are pretty friendly. I think privacy.com does this as a consumer experience really well. Note you said `checking accounts at will with different card numbers`. Depository accounts are a totally different notion and resource than cards.

However should you do this? I can't think of a reason why you'd want to for your own purposes. The reason fintech is so annoying is not because banks/tech players don't want you to have nice things, is that there is a ridiculous amount of regulatory overhead.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#52

Post by unethical_ban »

swyx wrote: post #44
zachthewf wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a B2B2C product (sold to businesses that are building consumer fintech products). There are a bunch of neobank fintech startups whose offering is "Banking for X", where X is some segment of the population with specific needs that are not well served by traditional banks. (Here for example is X = "Spanish speakers in the US".) [0] To build a startup like that, you need to build a product layer on top of a banking…

ok so followup question - lets say i buy this message and want to start "Banking for Medical Students" (well known gap, they have terrible credit history but are about to be good credits). The precise segment doesnt matter, my question is - how much of the banking capital requirements do i need to put up? because a bank isn't just about payment rails and credit cards, its also about having literal cash in the bank ri…

What I imagine is that there is either some kind of delegation of lending here, or that you get the backing/start a bank on your own and utilize this service to do the needful around account servicing more easily

Re: Increase: Banking API

#53

Post by holler »

pen2l wrote: post #25

Their lead UI guy was previously the UI lead at Stripe. I think of him as someone who appreciates and understands the importance of well-thought-out UI so I'm looking forward to how Increase pans out for that reason in particular.

Now it makes sense how their landing page is so impressive, and also reminds me of Stripe design.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#55

Post by chocolatkey »

swyx wrote: post #45
chocolatkey wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a real-life scenario that applies to my business: we employee 50+ freelancers ee pay every month. I dread when it comes time to pay them, because I have to log into multiple bank account and manually send each transfer using clunky web UIs. I am just copy-pasting all this data from a spreadsheet where it's already been verified. If I could automate payments to a sizeable portion of the freelancers, it would sa…

ah ok. so this is a workaround of the traditional banks having crappy UI/APIs? what about using Stripe/Braintree/Paypal/etc (i know those are not exact matches, but just enquiring about the general problem space)

This is completely different. Stripe/Braintree are ways to charge customers on their credit/debit card on your website, completely unwieldy for paying freelancers. You'd have to have freelancers set up Stripe merchant accounts and receive card payments, that would be very weird and broken use case, especially considering Stripe's fees. I can send a freelancer an ACH transfer for $0, why would I want to pay 3+%?

As for PayPal, some freelancer (especially outside US) do get paid using it, but paypal's fees are outrageous and we try to get anyone we can on an alternative like zelle, ach etc.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#57

Post by benjamindc »

holler wrote: post #53
pen2l wrote: post #25

Their lead UI guy was previously the UI lead at Stripe. I think of him as someone who appreciates and understands the importance of well-thought-out UI so I'm looking forward to how Increase pans out for that reason in particular.

Now it makes sense how their landing page is so impressive, and also reminds me of Stripe design.

Thank you, means a lot :)

Re: Increase: Banking API

#58

Post by bob1029 »

> Anything that you can achieve with PDFs, presence, and persistence in a bank branch you can do with our API.

Not sure how to take this. With a small tweak like "you can eventually do" I would let it pass without criticism.

I work with bank cores, imaging, BSA and related middleware on a daily basis. The scope and complexity of these systems is incomprehensible to most. Many of our clients don't even try to think about how fucked up their business is. They prefer to hire Deloitte and other vendors like us to be stressed about it for them.

To give you an idea of how comprehensive a "full" banking API is, our combined WSDL and XSD references total ~9 megabytes. This is before codegen. The final reference sources as generated into the .NET codebase total nearly 20 megabytes. This is just the types & method signatures. The actual implementations live in an IBM system manufactured some time during the previous millennium.

But, none of that really matters. Whatever API method you call against a specific bank will have behavior that ultimately depends on a million things specific to them _and the region within which they operate_. So, its not enough to simply integrate with this massive API. You also have to understand a multi-dimensional matrix of regulations, end-customer behaviors, technological constraints, active geopolitical affairs, et. al.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#59

Post by pen2l »

benjamindc wrote: post #57
holler wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now it makes sense how their landing page is so impressive, and also reminds me of Stripe design.

Thank you, means a lot :)

Oh hey, I'm a big fan!

I think while others have commented on how beautiful your creations are, I rather admire you for the care and detail you put on UI. Beautiful things are not always easy to use, and things that are well-laid-out and easy-to-use are not always beautiful. You have somehow arrived at the magical place where you've got them both down.

Re: Increase: Banking API

#60

Post by rthomas6 »

Shindi wrote: post #51
rthomas6 wrote: post #36

Is there any service like this for individuals? Specifically, I want to be able to open and close checking accounts at will with different card numbers, with different spending limits. The purpose would be to serve as an envelope system and budgeting tool.

If you're an enterprising individuals you can "kinda" do this but it's not easy and definitely 100% a headache. Neobanks sometimes use this notion of a virtual bank account. My understanding is that it's a single FDIC insured account that they subdivide using their own ledger. For cards, you can use Stripe Treasury or Lithic to issue your own virtual cards and their dev limits are pretty friendly. I think privacy.com…

> I can't think of a reason why you'd want to for your own purposes.

It's quite simple. For argument's sake let's say I am an individual with limited willpower. Say I budget $200 per month on restaurants, and I need to stick to this to meet some other financial goal. How, as someone with limited willpower, do I enforce this?

Option 1 is to keep track of and categorize all bank transactions, either manually or via a third party budgeting app, and check my "restaurant" balance each time before I order food. This is unlikely to happen because I am lazy and assume I have the money.

Option 2 is to keep a physical envelope of cash that I put $200 in. When the money runs out, I don't have any to buy restaurant food. This works, but is very inconvenient. How can I use Doordash, Venmo a friend, etc with this?

Option 3 is to have a debit card that only has restaurant money on it. Now the card simply doesn't work anymore when I'm out of money. It's effectively the same as the envelope, but now I can use it online as well.

Post reply on HN