Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#1

Post by xtrumanx » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 12:42 PM UTC

I wrote my own unofficial API for a banking website[0] (check balance, send money, view transaction history) by essentially writing a crawler that would do whatever the a user would do if they were navigating the website themselves. I built it for fun to see if it was possible and then shelved it along with the rest of the half-completed projects littering my hard drive.

I was wondering how feasible it would be to use it as a basis for a service to facilitate e-commerce. It would require the user to give me, a 3rd party, their credentials which isn't something I'd recommend someone to do. But then again, Mint has done well for themselves doing just that so perhaps my opinion on the matter isn't entirely relevant.

PayPal, BrainTree, Stripe, etc. are not available in my corner of the world and I feel that's too bad cause a good payments solution could be a big deal to businesses and consumers alike if available. I'd be happy if the bank shuts down my service as long as they (or someone else) provide an alternative.

Have you provided your bank credentials to Mint or another similar 3rd party service? If so why? Did you ever stop to think if it was a bad idea? Do you think most people do?

[0] https://github.com/xtrumanx/zapi

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#2

Post by hamidpalo » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 1:06 PM UTC

Mint provides value and it's a trusted brand, so people feel okay about giving them access.

I could potentially trust Mint but anything smaller and not based in the US definitely not.

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#3

Post by kennydude » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 1:07 PM UTC

It's a bad idea, but if you want automated access it's the best we've got. Ideally banks would provide a nice API, but without a good enough reason they're just not interested.

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#4

Post by saluki » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 1:07 PM UTC

y, I think providing your credentials is a bad idea and haven't done it. This came up in a thread a few weeks ago. I can't believe banks aren't required to provide a read-only access and/or API to your account. That would be a great solution for rolling your own budget tracker and allowing access for services like mint. Does anyone know if any banks have read-only passwords or an api?

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#5

Post by cfontes » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 1:08 PM UTC

I think some banks provide a view only access so you can give it to sites like mint.

Giving full access would be really crazy at least to me.

Good luck

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#6

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 1:08 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#7

Post by laurencei » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 1:14 PM UTC

I'm actually looking for a bank feed/API service for banks in Australia. Does anyone know of one?

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#8

Post by eoin_murphy » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 1:15 PM UTC

To get insight into their budgets.

I have tried one or two services similar to mint in an effort to get more control on budgeting. The typical bank provided online banking interface is like something from 10-15 years years ago with a painful interface and no real facilities to either analyse your income/spending on the site or to easily export data.

The promise of these other services is to scrape at your data, gather it into an easily viewable/filterable format and allow you to group it semantically (i.e. this payment every month is for rent, food, socializing) The idea being that it can automatically analyze the accounts give you more control over your budget.

My experience was that for personal accounts the analysis was no better than I was doing myself and they cannot account correctly for cash withdrawls which kind of defeats the purpose of the exercise. Finally, my bank recently updated their online banking site so that it's just as good as that offered by these external services.

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#9

Post by angdis » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 1:18 PM UTC

Yes, I've been a mint user since well before they were bought by Intuit.

I didn't think it was a bad idea, because it is clearly explained that Mint can't make changes to your accounts. It is only used for query. I am under the impression that the banks only allow Mint query capabilities. They've lately released a new service called "Mint Bills"-- which does make changes but that is separate from their main "Mint" service.

I've recommended Mint to friends and those who've tried it like it.

Things are changing lately, however. Banks are providing more and more "Mint-like" analytic services for their customers. These days, if you have your stuff at one bank there's little need for something like Mint.

I think there will always be room for a service that can work with multiple financial services/banks/accounts at the same time and with a uniform interface. Unfortunately, this is an exceedingly hard business for start-ups to crack (my opinion). To do it right (without asking users to literally surrender control of their accounts), services like Mint need to negotiate with multiple financial institutions-- not fun at all, just to get to the starting-point where one can compete with Mint.

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#10

Post by fiveoak » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 1:18 PM UTC

I use Mint, and of course I don't think providing your bank credentials to a 3rd party service is a good idea. That said the company backing Mint currently (Intuit) also does TurboTax, so at least they have some experience with handling sensitive customer data. Also in the event that they did get hacked, there are a ton of other people also using Mint which hopefully will give me time to change my passwords before any real damage is done. Overall it's something I'm not super comfortable about using, but I really enjoy the convenience of having all my accounts in one place, automatically updated, etc, that I'm willing to accept the hopefully small risk of getting hacked.

That said, I still have a hard time convincing others of using the service due to security concerns. I also personally wouldn't really trust a startup/smaller company with my data either since they don't have as much on the line as a larger established company does.