[HN Gopher] Community Banking and Fintech
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       Community Banking and Fintech
        
       Author : Ozzie_osman
       Score  : 24 points
       Date   : 2021-10-23 16:39 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bam.kalzumeus.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bam.kalzumeus.com)
        
       | skybrian wrote:
       | I'm wondering if postal banking in other countries serves a
       | similar role to community banking in the US, at least as far as
       | having local branches in rural areas is concerned?
       | 
       | The US Post Office is starting a pilot program, but it's unclear
       | if it will get anywhere.
        
         | aspenmayer wrote:
         | You have more info about the pilot program?
        
         | rsj_hn wrote:
         | They will need to significantly lower fees and expand services
         | if their ambition is greater than competing with check-cashing
         | outfits.
        
       | bob1029 wrote:
       | > Community banks mostly don't have programmers on staff, and are
       | reliant on the so-called "core processors" like Fiserv, Jack
       | Henry & Associates and Fidelity National Information Services.
       | These companies specialize in extremely expensive SaaS that their
       | customers literally can't operate without.
       | 
       | The complexity in this space is difficult to overstate. We've
       | been working on building solutions that integrate all of the
       | disparate legacy banking technology into 1 logical application
       | the bankers can use. Been going at this for almost a decade now.
       | 
       | Success in this space is extremely unlikely. We failed ~4 times
       | but were encouraged by how close we got on that 4th try to give
       | it a final go. Seems we have some traction this time. Watching
       | other vendors (with far more resources than us) try to break into
       | this space is quite amusing at this point.
       | 
       | The key to winning in banking with technology is to _listen to
       | the business_. There is a LOT of contradictory bullshit in
       | banking, and if you just use your developer intuition to build
       | the domain model in isolation, you _will_ fail as soon as the
       | business gets involved. Outsourcing development of these
       | integration products to a 3rd party is a guaranteed fail when
       | working with these kinds of customers.
       | 
       | Expert mode is building a product that can work at 3+ banks at
       | the same time. Darksouls mode is building one that can handle
       | more than 5 jurisdictions.
        
       | patio11 wrote:
       | If HN has any requests for future topics in intersection of tech
       | and finance, let me know. (I just kicked off this newsletter last
       | Friday.)
        
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