[HN Gopher] Column - a chartered bank for developers
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Column - a chartered bank for developers
Author : whockey
Score : 502 points
Date : 2022-04-21 13:33 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (column.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (column.com)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Congratulations on the launch! I wonder if this kind of business
| model, where it looks like there is basically "one really rich
| guy self-funding" for a couple of years, is going to be more
| common.
|
| That is, just looking at the site, my guess is that building
| everything from the ground up (core banking stack, acquiring the
| chartered bank, then all the APIs and tech on top of that) must
| have taken many years and many, many millions of dollars. And
| kudos, because the first thing that struck out at me is the
| documentation looks _excellent_. Overall, it looks like something
| where the the team had all the luxury to "do things right from
| the ground floor", instead of scrambling and making shortcuts
| before their runway ran out. I just think it would have been very
| hard to find a VC willing to be patient enough to wait that long
| with no revenue or customer feedback ("where's your MVP???")
| vasco wrote:
| > must have taken many years and many, many millions of dollars
|
| I don't have any inside knowledge, and obviously you can burn
| many millions even with a small team but:
|
| "We started building Column in 2019 and launched in 2022." [0]
|
| "We're only six engineers (seven if you count me...but I'm a
| weekend code pusher)" [1]
|
| [0] https://column.com/company/ [1]
| https://column.com/blog/hiring-at-column/
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yeah, agreed, it looks like they are very efficient. But I'm
| very familiar with the Bank as a Service space, and your data
| points very much prove my point:
|
| 1. The reason so many BaaS companies partner with existing
| banks is because the process of getting a bank charter is
| _incredibly_ time consuming and expensive. There are tons of
| costs just in legal /compliance before you've even done
| anything. I'm not 100% clear if Column bought an existing
| chartered bank or got a new charter, but either route is
| millions right off the get go.
|
| 2. As you point out, they were at 3 years from founding to
| launch. That's an eternity in the VC-funded startup world.
| Most startups have an initial MVP in a ~6 month time frame.
| abirch wrote:
| I think many starts ups are "rich people" self funding (or are
| parental funded). For instance Microsoft and Bill Gate's and
| Paul Allen's helped them out a lot. Ditto with Mark Zuckerberg,
| Elon Musk's Tesla & Space X, Warren Buffett's Berkshire
| Hathaway. You'll notice everyone aforementioned attended an Ivy
| League university.
| WJW wrote:
| At the very least Berkshire Hathaway is an odd example to be
| pointing out as a "self funded startup". Warren Buffett was
| an apprentice under Benjamin Graham for several years,
| operated several businesses beforehand to make his first
| millions and acquired the (heavily failing at the time)
| textile operations of Berkshire Hathaway around 1962, when
| Berkshire was already over a hundred years old.
| informalo wrote:
| Cool! Now do it again, but for Europe.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Will this service allow me to replace Stripe?
| ayksee wrote:
| Congratulations! Really excited and happy to see this come to
| fruition.
| _benj wrote:
| This looks super interesting!
|
| Is use case only to build products on top of your platform or
| could it be used for personal finances and, as a developer, add
| automations and such over the API?
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Silly question - is there any way to offer a card payment from
| Column, but restrict which outlets / shops can accept the
| payment?
|
| (I have an idea in mind :-)
| igorkraw wrote:
| Nice job, are you available in europe? If not, do you know any
| competitor doing something similar/when are you heading here?
| venantius wrote:
| We're rolling out something similar for the UK with
| https://griffin.sh - aiming to get our bank license this year.
| Then expanding to the rest of Europe :)
| PStamatiou wrote:
| Whoa this is awesome, congrats on launch. I was following along
| with https://Increase.com which seems to be in the same realm
| (former Stripe folks)
| RobLach wrote:
| This will be big.
| tehlike wrote:
| Seconding this. This looks fascinating.
| whockey wrote:
| Hey founder (and OP) here. This has been a labor of love for the
| past few years and I'm super stoked on what we shipped. Would
| love any and all feedback, thoughts and questions!
| giorgioz wrote:
| This looks like an awesome shiny tool but I'm not sure what I
| could do with it! Some Use Cases of successful or hypothetical
| customers using your product might help other understand how
| they can use Column for their business.
|
| Is Column Use case to create cards/accounts for a business'
| customers like Apple did with the Apple credit card?
|
| In my case, I'm the founder of https://www.waiterio.com which
| is a B2B order management system for restaurants... can I use
| Column to offer bank accounts and cards to restaurants owners?
| Or restaurant diners? What are the winnings for me related to
| revenues/branding/customers retention?
| fierro wrote:
| Yes, you can use Column to create and offer bank accounts as
| well as build debit/credit/charge programs. There's a part of
| the website that describes some common use cases
| https://column.com/docs/guides/#use-cases
| kolanos wrote:
| Is there a way to invite other users to a developer account? Or
| is it single user?
| whockey wrote:
| You can invite others to your team!
| boredumb wrote:
| Does this work in Puerto Rico?
| thedangler wrote:
| This is amazing. Good work!
| leetrout wrote:
| I have had this dream for YEARS.
|
| I wanted to make a community bank and then build the software
| to run it and start selling to other credit unions / community
| banks and start getting rid of the jack henry crap everywhere.
|
| Big congrats to you!
| yowlingcat wrote:
| Excited to kick the tires on this. Assuming it's correct to
| think of Column as a very special BaaS vendor (which owns its
| own bank and thus AVOIDS the double program manager problem),
| how would you compare and contrast your your unique value prop
| compared to other BaaS vendors like a Unit, Synapse, Treasury
| Prime?
|
| Would it be fair to assume better economics because your supply
| chain is more vertically integrated, or is there more to it
| than that which I'm missing?
| s_dev wrote:
| How would you describe your business to a five year old?
| [deleted]
| ushakov wrote:
| droobles wrote:
| From what I gather this is the Tesla of banks (comparing new
| kid on the block to the old guard - Tesla vs GM): meaning
| it's a modern bank with systems that run on something newer
| than COBOL with an open API. It's extremely cool and looks
| like it may set the standard of what banks must be in the
| future to compete with newer generations coming into the
| market.
|
| EDIT: add " coming into the market" to the end
| fierro wrote:
| not a bad analogy!
| jason0597 wrote:
| That sounds very similar to what Starling Bank offers in
| the UK, it doesn't sound that novel and new to me.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| I'm a little confused about who your customers are.
|
| Do I have this right?
|
| - Competent to develop and manage AML, KYC programs
|
| - Wants to handle underwriting, fraud, compliance & operational
| risk exposure
|
| - Develops software
|
| - Doesn't want to talk to ACH & VISA
|
| - Operates only in the US
|
| Who is that?
| devmor wrote:
| This is my line of query as well.
|
| At this level of integration minutiae I don't see a the
| benefit in not integrating directly with card issuers and
| ACH.
| mushufasa wrote:
| I imagine these limitations are going to be a moving target
| as they grow.
|
| A lot of developer driven organizations are very happy to
| outsource complex parts of development to managed services so
| they can focus on their core differentiators, especially when
| it comes to parts of the stack that need super high
| availability and security. This is why Auth0/Okta are big
| businesses and not everyone rolls their own key cloak /
| shibboleth instances, as one of many examples.
|
| This clearly seems like the Apex/Drivewealth model but for
| challenger banks or new online banking operations. It is hard
| to predict what startups or new projects will need this
| because those platforms can unlock innovation for new
| categories (e.g. no one imagined commission free trading in
| 2008, and Robinhood wouldn't exist without Apex).
| jeremyjh wrote:
| I guess my point is that payment and ledger back-ends
| aren't the hardest part about running a bank, they aren't
| even the hardest technology component. This isn't "for
| developers" in the same sense that Stripe is. It is for
| people ready to run a bank. Sure it will save you paying
| lawyers and regulators for charters and it will save you
| from buying a mainframe to run some crufty COBOL ledger but
| that still leaves a lot of yak shaving before you even get
| to the interesting part of your Fintech product.
|
| Okta is successful because almost every application needs
| authentication, almost every organization needs SSO, and no
| one considers it a core competency.
|
| The intersection of organizations who can run a bank but
| don't already have entrenched software to do so, and want
| to build all the other software themselves seems
| vanishingly small.
| moooo99 wrote:
| This seems to be the US equivalent to Solarisbank, which
| operates only in some EU countries. I don't know any
| specifics, but I have encountered Solaris a few times. For
| example they are used by TradeRepublic, basically the German
| Robinhood equivalent, and a handful of Neobank providers.
| Those Neobanks usually focus onto a specific niche and build
| their product based on the services offered by Solaris.
|
| I would imagine that Column could provide similar their
| services to similar companies and make the development of
| financial products significantly faster.
| [deleted]
| bpicolo wrote:
| There are several industries where wire for million dollar+
| transactions are the norm. Seems like a real enabler in those
| spaces?
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| No questions. Just wanted to say I got chills when I looked at
| this at how much potential it had. Very cool.
|
| also: The little column icon slide to the top right on login is
| cool .
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| Seriously, I'm so happy someone has done this. I would love
| it if the new saying was 'Column solves this'
| frays wrote:
| Would you consider Column a Neobank [0] or would this sit in a
| different category?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neobank
| ur-whale wrote:
| This looks like it's US only right now, is that correct?
|
| What are your plans to offer these services in other countries?
| whockey wrote:
| We plan on rolling out some corresponding banking services
| this year to help people with multi-currency accounts and
| international wires - but it would still be under our US
| charter. No short term plans to go international - there's a
| lot of ground we need to cover here. We tend to like to go
| very deep in an area instead of getting to spread thin.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| I can tell you MANY countries are NOT being served by
| services like STRIPE (South Africa for example) ! I always
| feel like there is a big opportunity bringing "these
| financial startups" to where the major players are NOT.
|
| Congrats on releasing ! :) I would use it, if it was
| available in South Africa :P
| sofixa wrote:
| Yeah, it's a tough spot. For the big players, there's
| heavy investment to enter a new market due to local
| regulations. A local startup could probably do it more
| easily, but while they grow there's always the risk the
| big players might decide they're a threat, they want that
| market, and invest rapidly and dump the local startup.
| thecosas wrote:
| Looks like Paystack is available in South Africa and
| might be worth checking out if you haven't already :-)
|
| https://paystack.com/za/pricing?localeUpdate=true
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I see you mention this in your docs, but do you provide any
| tools for the compliance side that would be required to use
| your API? E.g. if opening accounts on behalf of customers, all
| of those customers need to go through KYC. Do you monitor
| transactions for BSA/AML, or is that up to the user of the API?
|
| Thanks very much!
| politician wrote:
| Their docs lay out the list of regs:
| https://column.com/docs/guides/bank-accounts#compliance--
| leg...
| kolanos wrote:
| As someone who knows what goes into something like this, this
| is truly impressive work. Congrats on the launch.
| politician wrote:
| I don't see a link on your website to Column N.A.'s legal
| disclosures. I'm trying to determine whether you have your own
| direct connection to FedWire/FedACH, are going through a 3rd
| party service provider like Fiserv/FIS, or are going through
| another bank.
| fierro wrote:
| We connect directly to the Federal Reserve. No middleware
| (i.e Fiserv/FIS), no other banks.
| [deleted]
| civilized wrote:
| I'm excited about this because it may help with a problem I've
| had for many years: in a word, being my family's CFO.
|
| I'm a data scientist, and I'd like to be able to report as
| easily on my own personal finances as I can on the data of the
| company I work for. This is not a small thing for me. I want to
| take care of my family's finances, but I'm impatient with
| bullshit. I don't want to spend an hour every weekend logging
| into 10 different services, clicking on 10 different things in
| each company's always-different, always-shitty web UI to pull
| all the data I need. The easier and more convenient this is to
| do, the better job I will do managing my money and protecting
| my family.
|
| As a data scientist, I can handle writing a little code to make
| some API calls and crunch the numbers that come back. If APIs
| were available to me for all companies I have assets or
| liabilities with, I'd have no trouble being an awesome family
| CFO. But... there is nobody that wants to make this secure and
| easy for me!! I would have to go to a company like Personal
| Capital, give them ALL MY ACTUAL BANK LOGIN CREDENTIALS, and
| they'll go login and do some screen-scraping to get the data.
| Half the time that won't work because of 2FA complications.
| They'll bring that data into their little ecosystem, serve it
| through some shitty web interface, and use it to serve me
| whatever ad nonsense they want. It's immensely unpleasant,
| slow, unreliable, and insecure. It sucks ass.
|
| Is your company going to fix this, or perhaps be one part of
| the solution? One day, will I be able to run my own R and
| Python scripts that pull all my data, balance my checkbook
| against receipt screenshots, automatic fraud detection, show me
| how all my investments are doing? Maybe even open-source it so
| that others can do the same?
|
| Thank you so much, in advance, for reading and any reply you
| can make! I'm very excited for this!
| GregorStocks wrote:
| You might be interested in Tiller Money
| https://www.tillerhq.com/. They provide something very much
| along these lines, with the output being an auto-updating
| Google Sheet that you can do whatever you like with. You do
| still need to update credentials sometimes, but I've been
| using it for a few years and it works quite well.
| civilized wrote:
| I've never heard of this! I've seen millions of ads over
| the last few years, why haven't any of them been for this!
| I will check it out, thank you!
| lbotos wrote:
| Do note that Tiller and Personal Capital both use(d?) the
| same mechanism to scrape data: Yodlee
|
| https://www.yodlee.com/
| jawns wrote:
| Column's website says the company is "100% founder and employee
| owned."
|
| I'm curious about that ownership structure. I'm assuming you're
| not organized as a worker cooperative, with a "one worker, one
| vote" structure? Would you be willing to offer any details
| about the ownership stake of the founders vs. the other
| employees and what sort of decision making employees' ownership
| stake entitles them to?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Great stuff. Dealing with the insanity of legacy workarounds a
| la Plaid has been a consistent nightmare for my company.
|
| >Would love any and all feedback, thoughts and questions!
|
| How about custodial accounts?
| alberth wrote:
| Looks fantastic and the onboarding is great.
|
| Can you talk a bit more about how KYC works at Column.
| etchalon wrote:
| Well this is fucking awesome.
| manesioz wrote:
| This looks incredible, congrats on the release. Does anyone know
| if something similar exists in Canada?
| mstibbard wrote:
| Does anyone know what they used to produce their API
| documentation?
| whockey wrote:
| We built everything in house!
| mstibbard wrote:
| It looks fantastic, as does the whole product. I've been
| hoping for someone to make a good bank-in-a-box for a long
| time. Good luck!
| sp527 wrote:
| There's something about this that smells like "anyone can now
| operate a bank without a charter or being subjected to regulatory
| oversight" that's maximally distressing and I think it's
| incumbent upon the founders to clarify their intent.
|
| A proliferation of loosely regulated banking entities was the
| basis for an economic disaster over a century ago in the US when
| fractional reserve logic had yet to be formalized. I'm sure that
| Column enforces reserve requirements, but this has the stench of
| something that could enable some analogous calamity in the
| financial (and therefore real) world.
|
| It was no less esteemed a figure than Galbraith himself who noted
| that there's really no such thing as innovation in finance - it's
| just people finding ways to run the same kinds of scams over and
| over again.
|
| What's to stop someone from using this to create a 'virtual'
| depository institution, issue bad loans against deposits that it
| attracts with the promise of extraordinary interest, monetize the
| loans for personal enrichment, and then crash and burn when the
| aggregate default rate of the loan portfolio becomes
| unsustainable, sticking the FDIC (and therefore taxpayers) with
| the bill? And that's just one of many possible fraud scenarios.
|
| The answer is either "nothing" or that Column doesn't really
| matter as a company because the theoretical customer base is
| vanishingly small and it doesn't solve the truly important
| problems in banking.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| If a developer writes a product that others use, I wonder what
| type of legal fine print we need to include?
|
| For example, if I start my own micro-credit card using this
| service, I may have my own legal t&a, but I wonder if I need to
| include Column's as well?
| boringg wrote:
| Brilliant. Wish you the best of luck!
| openthc wrote:
| Will you bank businesses related to cannabis but that don't touch
| cannabis?
|
| Also, your 'Verify' email still has a bunch of default template
| text in it.
|
| ""This is preheader text. Some clients will show this text as a
| preview.""
|
| -- Root/Entity & Beneficial Owner form has some ambigious error
| messages; doesn't show where what is wrong (eg: which of the
| three addresses was bad?) -- and the message disappears before it
| can be acted on.
| heassler wrote:
| Looks amazing. Would love to have this in the UK.
| creativenolo wrote:
| Agree. But I wonder how much innovation a single company can
| do. The digital innovation in the UK across banking is massive.
| From what I see, light years ahead of the US.
| igrav55 wrote:
| Check out https://griffin.sh/
| venantius wrote:
| Hi! Griffin co-founder and CEO here. Yes, we're building
| exactly what Column is building but for the UK. Fun fact -
| Column's CEO is even an investor in us!
| whockey wrote:
| Griffin is super rad!
| blockwriter wrote:
| I am not a professional developer, but I have been developing
| little projects because I realized the importance, both
| personally and professionally, of keeping up with new
| technologies. I would be interested in setting up an account with
| Column, if only to grow familiar with its advantages. I have been
| working with Stripe to handle my business' e-commerce and in-
| person payments. I am curious to know if there is an advantage to
| using Column in conjunction with a service like Stripe. I know
| Stripe does things like card issuing. What are the reasons,
| either explicit or esoteric, for using Column's features rather
| than a service like Stripe where those features overlap?
| belfalas wrote:
| Very cool! Is this powered by Marqeta under the hood?
| whockey wrote:
| Nope! We're a bank not an issuing processor (its pretty
| confusing...), we don't wrap any vendors or 3rd parties.
| However, they're an excellent issuing processor so a bunch of
| our customers use them and us together.
| tosh wrote:
| What does "chartered" mean?
| whockey wrote:
| In the US (and most countries) in order to get access to the
| central bank (in the US the fed) and do 'banking things' like
| holding money, moving money, and lending money you have to have
| a banking charter. We have a national charter (issued by the
| OCC) but you can also have some other more bespoke charters as
| well!
| tome wrote:
| So what's a non-chartered bank?
| lachyg wrote:
| I believe they're looking to imply here that they own their
| own charter, rather than renting someone else's, which is
| how almost all U.S. fintech companies operate (look in the
| website footer of, say, Unit and you'll see: "Banking
| services are provided by Unit's partner banks who are
| Member FDIC.")
| fierro wrote:
| this is an important point. There are other providers who
| offer programatic creation of bank accounts, payments,
| etc. But all existing solutions wrap a bank, who then
| wrap middleware providers and core systems. When you work
| with Column, you're working with _only_ Column. This has
| implications for cost (fewer people taking a slice of the
| pie), performance /usability/experience (modern, tightly
| integrated systems), and development velocity (fewer
| players in the game of Telephone). Column collapses the
| layers of the financial services stack and exposes this
| functionality via API.
| bogwog wrote:
| I assume that means Column can offer lower costs, or
| something?
| phphphphp wrote:
| I'm sure costs is part of the equation but I'd imagine
| the control is far more important. Reselling legacy bank
| services means you're limited to what they can do, which
| is usually not much. Most finance technology is heavily
| limited by what they can do... because of their partners,
| and that's why they're usually just nicer interfaces to
| the same old services. Hence banks like Monzo in the UK
| building their own infrastructure from the ground up too.
| The less you're dependent on legacy technology, the more
| you can do.
| molsongolden wrote:
| Many neobanks/fintechs aren't chartered banks, they're
| customer experience layers built on top of a partner bank's
| infra.
| procrastinatus wrote:
| How does this compare with Stripe Treasury (banking as a
| service)? https://stripe.com/treasury
| _praf wrote:
| Engineer at Column here! The difference between us and ALL
| banking as a service companies (Stripe Treasury, Unit, etc) is
| that we are the actual underlying bank in the transaction. BaaS
| companies usually wrap one or several banks (like us) to
| provide their API's.
| u2077 wrote:
| Could I create a bank account for personal use that has api
| access? Or is the product only for businesses that issue
| cards and accounts to others?
| _praf wrote:
| Yup. You can sign up today for sandbox access, and then
| contact us once you are ready to go live and move real
| money.
|
| Truth is, we probably aren't great as a personal checking
| account, and thats not really the intended use case. But
| you are welcome to try us out and see what you can build!
| phonon wrote:
| Looks awesome. Plan to support RTP? FedNow?
| _praf wrote:
| Stay tuned ;)
| VincentEvans wrote:
| Congrats on launching!
|
| I just want to vent about something bank-related, and hopefully
| bait someone to tell me how this solves it. Or something else
| solves it.
|
| Have you ever heard how you could pay off your mortgage a lot
| quicker by making bi-weekly payments instead of monthly? Or how
| you can include extra with your payment and instruct your bank to
| apply it directly to the premium, helping you reduce your
| interest?
|
| TLDR, I think people giving this advice haven't tried applying
| it.
|
| Well, I wanted to do that - but in practice I found it near
| impossible to accomplish. First - any form of electronic bill-pay
| is right out of the window, because any extra payments or amount
| - the bank will apply as pre-paying your next scheduled payment,
| which means you are pre-paying not just principal, but the
| interest as well. Why would anyone want to do that? The bank
| helpfully told me that "some people maybe are going on vacation
| and will be away when the bill is due". Yeah...
|
| You can try to submit a paper invoice with special instructions
| by postal mail. Then it may or may not work. I don't know if it's
| incompetence or outright customer-hostile behavior from the bank,
| but this method succeeded only some of the time. You have to
| follow up by phone to find out and even so making any corrections
| after the fact is difficult and requires multiple call transfers
| and waiting on hold.
| kakuri wrote:
| Sounds like you have had the misfortune of using terrible
| banks. I have never had this issue with home mortgages or car
| loans, it was always easy to make extra payments directly to
| the principal.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I use a regional bank and they have always been a bit behind
| when it comes to tech. But even a decade ago, I could make my
| payment online and there was a simple checkbox to send extra
| payments toward the principal.
| not_math wrote:
| At the bank I worked at, any payments made on the account that
| were above the due payment were applied directly on the
| account. But then you had people complain when they missed a
| payment because they put more money in the account to not miss
| the payment. You can't please everyone.
|
| Banking is hard because everyone is doing it differently, and
| everyone is doing it. So you have to please older people that
| are used to calling or speaking to a bank teller and also
| please the younger generation who want to do everything online
| and not deal with humans.
|
| The easiest way is to call when you want to do something the
| system is not expecting, because we had to manually adjust the
| final date of the loan, the amount due, and things like that.
| Terrible system and way more highly susceptible to human errors
| (trust me, I've seen a lot).
|
| There were also a lot of silos (different departments) to do
| specific tasks, so you would get transferred a lot until
| somebody knew exactly who could handle your case. Most people
| were new recruits from University working part time, so they
| didn't know enough to answer most questions and when they did
| they usually had their degree so they switched jobs.
| [deleted]
| melony wrote:
| Try this one
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30685921
| VincentEvans wrote:
| Thank you for that! This seems to be exactly targeting the
| problem i described!
| giorgioz wrote:
| An interesting thing I heard is that is not so convenient to
| pay off the mortgage earlier. Mortgages are debt with 1-3% per
| year. You could take the money you already have and put it in
| an ETF covering the whole market which kept for a long time (10
| years) in average will return you 5-8% per year. I also had the
| instinct of paying off the mortgage faster if I could until
| they explained me that. Never had chance to do it. I'm
| interested in hearing some expert opinion about it!
| arcticbull wrote:
| Or even throw it in a Series I risk-free savings bond paying
| 8%.
|
| [edit] I'm not an expert but explained why I wouldn't do that
| personally in a peer to your reply.
| giorgioz wrote:
| Your comment, though sarcastic, underlines some points I
| thought about myself and I would like to discuss it!
|
| We are both well aware that there is no risk-free
| investment. Governments bonds that are considered less
| risky that ETFs usually return 1-2% per year.
|
| The ETF I'm talking about maps a market index covering a
| big chunk of the US market or several stable international
| markets. They are still a risk, your house is also an asset
| and is also a risk. I think if you only have your mortgage
| as an asset then probably buying some ETFs would help
| diversify your assets. But if you already have a lot ETFs
| then maybe would be better to finish up earlier the
| mortgage...
| arcticbull wrote:
| Sorry if I came across that way, I wasn't being sarcastic
| at all. Series I bonds are essentially risk-free unless
| you think the US government plans to default within the
| next 1 year (which is basically the lock-up period).
| Series I bonds pay a coupon equal to CPI. The current
| Series I interest rate is 7.11%. It is variable, however,
| and capped at $10,000 in contributions per year (online).
| [1]
|
| [1] https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/products/prod_ib
| onds_gl...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I think if you only have your mortgage as an asset
|
| Your mortgage is a liability, not an asset.
| arcticbull wrote:
| It really isn't if the interest rate is below inflation.
| If it's below inflation, the mortgage is yielding real-
| dollar value. That's an asset in my eyes.
|
| It's a calendar spread. Last year, you were buying 2021
| dollars for a fixed rate (2.675% APR in my case), but you
| different vintage dollars over time. You owe 2022 dollars
| in 2022, and 2031 dollars in 2031. A 2051 dollar is
| almost certainly going to be worth significantly less
| than a 2021 dollar.
|
| So you're buying 1 2021 vintage USD, but at the extreme,
| you're paying it back with 2.2 2050 dollars. If we expect
| inflation to be an average of say, 3% over that period,
| each 2021 vintage USD should be worth at least 2.42 2021
| vintage dollars. So in this example, you're earning real
| dollars over this period.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It really isn't if the coupon rate is below inflation
|
| It's a liability in the amount of the balance. I suppose
| you could consider the present value of the "income"
| stream of the difference between inflation and interest
| over the life of the loan as an asset, but unless it's a
| very unusual loan, any income stream of that kind is
| likely to be a transitory effect, and interest is likely
| to be be a real as well as nominal expense considered
| over the life of the loan.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Indeed, you are of course correct! I'm just hoping folks
| look at mortgages not as a strictly bad thing, but as a
| tool in their financial arsenal. They can be good! I
| think most folks are stuck in nominal dollar mode, and it
| can really help to look at things in real dollar terms.
|
| I think I may have been loose with my words.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's a personal decision and can go either way, and depends
| on your cash flow and risk tolerance, and goals.
|
| There are many ways to look at it, and the financial aspects
| aren't always the most important ones. If you have higher
| debt (credit card, etc) you probably want to pay those off
| first.
|
| You may want to have ready cash available (stocks, ETFs, etc
| can be sold) - but once you put money back into your mortgage
| it can be hard to get it back out (HELOCs can affect this).
|
| You may find you're not good with savings, and paying extra
| "forces" you to save (people do this with taxes all the time,
| preferring to get a large refund as a "windfall" vs having
| some amount of money extra each paycheck).
|
| And it can all change AGAIN from a cash flow perspective - if
| you have a few years left on a ten year mortgage paying it
| down faster gets you to the point where you have no mortgage
| payment faster - that may not matter to you as much if you're
| 29 years left on a 30 year mortgage.
|
| Also paying down debt is a certainty, but ETF returns could
| do anything (we have had ten year periods of negative returns
| in the past). Conversely, inflation makes your debt load
| lesser, assuming your income inflates at some point.
| tclancy wrote:
| This got a lot harder with the rise of the Internet because
| what was fairly well-known became completely well-known so
| loaners started creating poison pill clauses to try to stop it.
| And then once they moved to electronic billing a lot of them
| came up with the hostile options you mention. The couple of
| times I have refinanced mortgages, I explicitly checked this
| when choosing between offers.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > Have you ever heard how you could pay off your mortgage a lot
| quicker by making bi-weekly payments instead of monthly? Or how
| you can include extra with your payment and instruct your bank
| to apply it directly to the premium, helping you reduce your
| interest?
|
| Generally speaking you don't want to do that.
|
| A mortgage with an interest rate of like 3% (to which anyone in
| the last year refinanced or, or got on purchase - mine's
| 2.675%) is well below inflation. This means that having the
| loan is actually earning you money. When inflation is 8.5% and
| you're paying 3% interest on that loan, you're actually making
| 5.5% per annum by paying back the loan with future, inflated
| dollars.
|
| That's before you factor in the mortgage interest tax
| deduction, and opportunity cost.
|
| All in, not paying off your mortgage faster is likely earning
| you 6-7% per annum _before_ you factor into account opportunity
| cost. On a Series I savings bond, that opportunity cost is like
| [edit] 7.11% [1].
|
| Each time you pay into a Series I bond instead of paying off
| your mortgage you're earning about 15% per annum on that money
| vs paying off early.
|
| You want to keep your low-interest mortgage for as long as you
| possibly can, deduct the interest, and set aside anything you
| would have put towards early payments. If interest rates ever
| drop below what you're paying, refinance. Don't pay it off
| early unless your mortgage APR minus deductions is higher than
| inflation.
|
| [1]
| https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/products/prod_ibonds_gl...
| jjeaff wrote:
| You have a rather sophisticated analysis here, yet, you left
| out the most important factor: risk. Something that every
| sophisticated investor must take into account. And in the
| case of your personal residence, you have to take into
| account not only investment risk, market risk and interest
| rate risk (which you alluded to re: refinancing, but you left
| out the fact that you are not guaranteed to be able to
| refinance and even when you do, there are fees associated),
| but you also have the risk of losing your home and being
| homeless. For many people, the latter risk is assigned a very
| high rate, so I don't think it is as simple (or complicated)
| as you make it out to be.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| If they're banking cash they would have otherwise put into
| their mortgage, then that extra liquidity is going to be a
| good thing should it come to foreclosure.
| skybrian wrote:
| This is a form of leverage, but how do you use it in a low-
| risk way? Fixed income investments seem to be near zero, and
| maybe people don't want to invest more in stock.
|
| If the alternative is cash sitting in a bank account, paying
| off the loan looks better.
|
| Edit: I looked at Series I, and it's variable rate with a
| 3-month interest penalty for early withdrawal, so you're not
| going to get 7% in the end. It seems worth doing a more
| detailed calculation.
| mjmahone17 wrote:
| You don't want to do this now, but there's a reasonable world
| we end up in where either inflation hovers at 1%, like most
| the last 5 years (so you earn 2% by paying down a mortgage,
| vs -1% when putting it into a savings account), or interest
| rates stabilize at 10%, or both!
|
| Also some people just hate having debt, and so they want to
| pay down debts as quickly as possible. Even if it's
| "irrational" their goal is to pay down their mortgage in the
| least amount of time. It is better for them to pay down
| principal than enqueue future payments.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Long term debt has a mental tax that does not show up in a
| bank statement. While it may be "smart" to pay the minimum
| amount on a subsidized student loan, there's nothing like
| just paying it off and being done with it, forever.
| VincentEvans wrote:
| Answering both you and GP I belong to the "some people"
| group you described in your post. It's not that I don't
| understand the math, it's just that I don't have the mental
| capacity and time in my life to take advantage of this
| arbitrage.
|
| To illustrate - I have an acquaintance who transfers money
| between credit cards to take advantage of points, and sign-
| up offers etc. Were I to engage in such activity myself -
| assuming I know anything about myself at all, it is that I
| will 100% forget some detail or date and end up getting
| charged all of the delayed interest making me worse off
| than if I didn't engage in such a scheme at all.
|
| So it's like that. Rather than chasing some optimization in
| a half-ass manner, I'd rather just pay off the debt and pay
| less of my money to the bank.
| sneak wrote:
| There's no other thing to do, however, other than what
| you're already doing with your otherwise unused savings
| (hopefully index funds). Put your money in that instead
| of paying the mortgage early, and you'll end up with more
| money at the end of the mortgage. It's about the simplest
| optimization possible.
| arcticbull wrote:
| The only optimization is don't pay off your mortgage
| early. It's actually less complicated haha.
| giorgioz wrote:
| Can you name your bank please so to make it a negative review
| on their bad business practises?
| VincentEvans wrote:
| It's a credit union called Trumark.
|
| On a related note - it appears to me that credit unions are
| no longer what the conventional wisdom said they are either -
| a small community and customer-minded institution.
|
| In practice - I frequently see them being bought up or
| transferring management and resembling the national chains in
| how they operate more and more. Not sure what the difference
| is to be honest.
| bombcar wrote:
| Credit unions "legally" have to be owned by the customers,
| but this doesn't guarantee they'll be any good.
|
| Many of them decided "going online" was too hard, and
| outsourced all that stuff to providers. It can take some
| research to find a good _local_ credit union that actually
| works well, and sometimes you have to accept the way they
| do things vs how you want to do things.
|
| Our local credit onion services AND holds 10 year
| mortgages, everything else they resell and service for
| awhile, but the servicing may get sold off, too. This can
| mean that even if you find a perfect bank to borrow from
| that changes shortly after you sign.
|
| Or you can switch some stuff to the massive brokerage
| houses, which all have associated banks and pretty decent
| staff/cost/features.
| kemitche wrote:
| I am able to add additional premium payments to my payment, or
| as a separate payment, via my online mortgage payment site.
|
| It sounds like the bank/site your loan is under is actively
| hostile towards such payments. I don't know enough about
| mortgages to know how to help you solve your side, though.
| lbotos wrote:
| The most sad part is, while I'm not OP, I had a bank that
| supported bi-weekly payments, my mortgage was sold, and the
| new bank _doesn 't_. What a kick in the pants!
| arcticbull wrote:
| They're saving you money by not supporting bi-weekly
| payments :)
| lbotos wrote:
| I assume you mean because the extra money that I'm
| putting into my house could make more money in the market
| so instead of a 13th payment, get gains in the market?
| arcticbull wrote:
| Well, as long as your (interest minus interest tax
| credit) rate is below inflation, youre better off putting
| that money in a 0% interest savings account than paying
| down the debt faster. Or consider 7% from a Series I
| bond, or investing it in something else.
| VincentEvans wrote:
| Yeah, that's the rub, isn't it. I would have asked the
| person you are replying to "what is that fabled
| institution?" (I still want to know though) - but the
| problem is two-fold: first, it's not like I can just take
| my mortgage with me and change banks, and second, the banks
| seem to change hands, or they sell mortgages to other
| banks. So even if you do your due-diligence, (which I did I
| assure you, there was a reason I went with that bank, since
| it had a relationship with my employer and offered
| preferential rates), over last X years the bank went under
| new management and situation changed dramatically :(
| bombcar wrote:
| It all depends on who services your mortgage. In my case, the
| credit onion asked what to do with overpayments (because they
| also asked if I wanted to round up the payment to make it a
| whole dollar amount).
|
| Some banks aren't setup to handle this correctly, and do weird
| things with a bimonthly payment. They get a payment on the 1st,
| but it's not the full amount due, so they apply the _entire_
| payment to principle. Then they get another payment on the
| 15th, and since it 's not the full amount due, they apply it to
| principle _again_ , and then they complain that you didn't pay
| your mortgage, you point out they're dumb, and they have
| someone go torture the computer until the late fee is gone.
|
| And then this happens _every single time_ and so the bank gives
| up and just applies all payments to "amounts due".
|
| Older banks are quite susceptible to this. You can solve this
| because the "lot quicker" isn't really because of early
| payments, it's because there are 12 months in a year but 26
| biweekly payments, which means you make a 13th mortgage
| payment; so just do one principle payment or increase your
| monthly payment by 10% or so.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Word for this is based.
| theptip wrote:
| This looks interesting. Their "before" picture is a bit
| misleading though; it's a worst-case. You can already get an
| account with Silicon Valley Bank as a startup and originate ACH
| directly over NACHA (source: I built this).
|
| However, providing an API abstraction over ACH is cool. I would
| say it's worth paying a bit more to Stripe to not have to deal
| with ACH directly, but then you add a payment hop between you and
| your payees (==delay) so having a bank that offers a nice API
| without adding a hop would be very useful.
|
| Note that "FBO" (for benefit of) bank accounts are actually quite
| a valuable feature that is expensive to set up as a startup, and
| let you execute some exotic legal/funds-flow structures. So
| pretty cool that you can get those.
| vfprp321 wrote:
| This is a cool idea for sure...as a dev I'll definitely take a
| look at the API docs.
|
| That said, are you a tad worried about the future of "fintech
| apps"? It seems like a lot of the revenue growth in this space
| was heavily related to ZIRP and/or super low rates in the
| preceding few years, which made these apps more attractive to
| consumers. So, is there an existential worry that the success of
| the apps that will build on top of your bank is too closely tied
| to potentially unrealistic Fed policy?
| totoglazer wrote:
| Could you share more on the legal entities that underlie Column?
| In particular, what's actually chartered at OCC and a member of
| FDIC? I can't find you, but maybe you just have a different name
| (for now?)
| zrail wrote:
| This is awesome!
|
| Could you talk more about the monthly minimums? Also can I create
| personal accounts with this or is it just business accounts?
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Very interesting. How are you dealing with KYC regulations? Do
| you provide that, or is it the responsibility of developers
| calling your API to have already done KYC.
| whockey wrote:
| We let developers bring their own KYC providers. There are so
| many great solutions out there I don't think the world needs
| another one :)
|
| In general our approach is to focus on building things that
| 'only a bank can do' and if there are great existing solutions
| (ie: fraud, kyc, issuing processors) we let developers bring
| those solutions. We play nicely with all of them.
| ValentineC wrote:
| I had a quick look through your docs, and it would be really
| great if Column allowed Entities to use identifiers other
| than SSN:
|
| https://column.com/docs/api/#entity/object
| koboll wrote:
| Would be nice to have a side-by-side comparison with the steps
| to starting and operating a bank to get a full picture of what
| Column abstracts away and what founders must still DIY.
| Currently you have to dig deep into the use case docs to
| determine some of these details.
| PeopleB4Cars wrote:
| This but as a credit union
| [deleted]
| ncake wrote:
| If this is a US-only service, it should say so on the website
| somewhere.
|
| I've also had this experience with e.g. Betterment and
| Wealthfront. The only way to find out they're US-only is halfway
| through sign up process, not even anywhere in FAQ's.
| taejavu wrote:
| The first line under the main heading starts with "The only
| nationally chartered bank...". That, combined with the dot com
| domain, implies pretty heavily that it's a US only thing. At
| least, it did for me.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Will you support FedNow instant payments when it GAs next year?
| Alias support for transfers and payments?
|
| Also, my favorite part of your site is this part of your Careers
| page:
|
| > I don't fit into any of these roles.
|
| > You get Column and you think you can drive value on day one.
| We'll be honest the bar will be pretty high for us to hire
| outside of these roles - but fuck it, surprise us. Give us a
| compelling narrative and hustle....and we promise we'll read the
| email!
|
| Very cool product, excited to see it grow. Def the future of
| fintech.
| _praf wrote:
| Engineer at Column here. We absolutely want to be early
| adopters of all new Fed technologies and payment rails. That
| being said, the rollout on these things is...slow. The Fed
| moves at its own pace, but we will definitely be right there
| with them.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Thank you for the reply. One more question: is it possible to
| sign up as an institutional investor to buy loans originated
| on the platform alongside Column's buy side?
|
| https://column.com/loan-purchase
| tristanMatthias wrote:
| Im consistently disappointed with the state of banks in the US
| (Aussie here). This looks amazing.
|
| Would it be possible for me to build something for personal use
| on top of this? Or are you only targeting business at this stage?
| DenseComet wrote:
| Tacking onto this question, does anyone have recommendations
| for US banks that have API access and allow personal use?
|
| I've come across a couple companies such as Mercury but they're
| only for business use.
| bogwog wrote:
| I know Chase at least offers an OFX endpoint if you pay a
| monthly fee (like ~$10/mo). I wrote a tool a while back that
| would automatically use that to download my transaction data
| and store it in a local format for personal accounting
| purposes. It worked well, but I abandoned it out of laziness.
| gtkspert wrote:
| I've resorted to writing a service that can initiate
| transfers and retrieve transactions for a smaller US bank.
|
| I really just want a bank account with an API, that would be
| so, so nice.
| joshstrange wrote:
| That was the promise with Simple (which they promptly
| abandoned), it's the main reason I signed up with them in
| the first place.
|
| You can get away with something like Plaid if you just want
| data but for actually making moves you'd need something
| else.
| crate_barre wrote:
| Just to add to your point, can one run their own bank with
| this?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| What are some of things you can build using Column? Ideas?
|
| Btw, amazing brand name. Column.
| Asafp wrote:
| I am one of the Engineers at Unit.co - we are also building a
| platform that allows developers to embed financial features into
| their product Congratulations on the launch! the market is huge
| and competition is welcome :) Column took a very interesting
| route, while we have Bank Partners that we develop with them,
| Column is also the bank , curies to know why they decided to take
| this route.
| bogwog wrote:
| This looks so damn interesting and cool, but I'm still trying to
| wrap my head around the concept of a "bank for developers". I get
| payment processors, like Stripe, but this is a level or two below
| that, right?
| _praf wrote:
| Engineer at Column here! Exactly - we provide access to bare
| metal banking. Think of us as the bottom layer of the financial
| infrastructure stack.
| durpkingOP wrote:
| Do you plan on offering merchant accounts? (mids)?
| kommstar wrote:
| Where is the integration with the crypto networks? My crypto is
| programmable and I would love to see my bank have an api as well.
| whockey wrote:
| Super interesting - what would you like to see? Like USD/USDC
| swappable accounts or something?
| kommstar wrote:
| Right now I have an account now where I can deposit USDC and
| spend via tap to pay/debit card. Basically just a debit card
| linked crypto account, rewards are $$$ (4%) and adjusting
| balances is fast and easy. Also programmable so I can replace
| what is spent without having to manually transfer. This helps
| tremendously with managing the families access/budgeting of
| funds.
|
| Would also be nice to have an account where legacy payments
| (ACH) can be made that also has an interface to deposit USDC.
| Right now I need to ACH deposit to my bank account (from
| crypto), and then ACH withdraw to pay the bill. Eventually
| you could just get rid of the ACH part and convince the
| accounts receivable to accept USDC (and profit?).
|
| Bringing both these services under one roof so it is a bit
| easier to manage would be the holy grail of legacy and future
| financial products.
| pc86 wrote:
| What is this account through? That sounds interesting.
| chologrande wrote:
| This looks really cool, but can someone help me understand more
| about where it fits in the market?
|
| Is this for me, as a developer to just make my own bank accounts?
| Does this allow me to create a bank frontend SaaS and use column
| as the backend? Can I originate loans with this platform for
| myself, or maybe to others somehow?
|
| tl;dr Who is the customer?
| ModernMech wrote:
| A little off topic, but I find it amusing phone booths have been
| reinvented. Also funny they look like refrigerators:
|
| https://column.com/company
|
| Cool that a husband wife team is doing this, I wonder what their
| relationship is like.
| fensterblick wrote:
| Questions for the founding team, and others: What books or
| resources did you helpful in understanding the plumbing of the US
| banking system?
| whockey wrote:
| Central Banking 101 by Joseph Wang is incredible.
| strzalek wrote:
| Payments Systems in the U.S. by Carol Coye Benson is a great
| starter - it's a mandatory onboarding read at a lot of fintechs
| shivaas wrote:
| https://www.fintechbookclub.com/ and
| https://notafintech.company/ are two other resources I'd point
| you at to learn more about US banking and fintech in general.
| strzalek wrote:
| Hey, I'm an ex-Square that is part of founding engineering team
| at Column. My team will be monitoring this thread and we'll be
| happy to answer any questions! Especially those about ACH, I'm
| sure you have plenty and we know it through-out!
| crate_barre wrote:
| Do you guys issue physical cards or checks?
| strzalek wrote:
| We're an issuing bank and sponsor card programs on Visa &
| Mastercard. Our partners can offer both physical and virtual
| cards to users. Checks are currently in beta but please get
| in touch if we can help! https://dashboard.column.com/contact
| thrill wrote:
| Maybe do something fancy like X1 and offer a metal card?
| instagary wrote:
| Can you talk about instant ACH, why do some charter partners
| like Robinhood and Coinbase support it but other legacy banks
| don't?
|
| How is instant ACH different to regular? Also, is it true that
| ACH is not instant bank to bank - essentially the banks settle
| up at the end of each month with 1 giant transaction?
|
| What about P2P support via Zelle, I recently learned it's
| lipstick on a pig and basically ACH under the hood.
|
| Sorry in advance if the questions are outside the scope of this
| thread.
| [deleted]
| igrav55 wrote:
| This looks awesome! A few questions:
|
| - Will there be an openapi spec to generate clients in most
| languages?
|
| - Do you support depositing checks via the dashboard?
|
| - Out of curiosity, what database are you using for high
| availability?
| Asafp wrote:
| Hi, I am an engineer at Unit.co, a company that also builds
| Banking as a Service. We use PostgreSQL as database, and
| currently thinking about adding ElasticSearch to allow our
| users to do text search.
| SgtBastard wrote:
| Friend, its in poor taste to hijack a question about a
| competitors product to spruik your own - I would be less
| likely to consider Unit.co as a result of what you're doing
| here.
| drogus wrote:
| Looks interesting! Do you plan to create an SDK? Or is
| interfacing with the HTTP API will be the best way to use the
| app for now?
| Asafp wrote:
| earthboundkid wrote:
| How much COBOL do you have to write on a daily basis?
| Asafp wrote:
| Hi, I am an Engineer at Unit.co, a company that also builds
| Banking as a Service. I can share that not only we do not use
| COBOL, but our entire backend is written in Pure Functional
| Scala (and typescript for UI).
| strzalek wrote:
| Zero. The whole stack is built in golang from scratch and we
| integrate with FED over some... interesting protocols.
| thecosas wrote:
| we integrate with FED over some... interesting protocols.
|
| Would love to know more!
| usrn wrote:
| My understanding is they sftp batches of CSV files at
| eachother.
| shivaas wrote:
| this is probably closer to the truth that you might have
| imagined :) that at that most of the $1T+ ACH transfers
| that happen daily in the US banking system happen over
| plaintext files and SFTP (source: I've written one of
| these files)
| jawspeak wrote:
| Using Fedline Command with Axway by chance? E.g. see https:
| //www.frbservices.org/binaries/content/assets/crsocms/...
| matrix of ways to connect to the Fed.
| sunsetSamurai wrote:
| how's the team liking using go so far? any pain points?
| Brystephor wrote:
| 1. Can you share some use cases for this?
|
| 2. It seems like I can use your API to create bank accounts
| with your bank. Does this mean I could become a "bank wrapper"
| and use your API to generate real bank accounts and become a
| digital bank without having to go through the legal processes
| of becoming a real bank?
| simplify wrote:
| Off topic: Does founding engineering team mean founders who are
| also engineers, or does it mean pre-launch engineer hires?
| mdaniel wrote:
| > Create account numbers that point to a single bank account and
| create specific permissions and limits for each one.
|
| I _love_ that; there are so many places that give a 6% discount
| for using ACH but I don 't want to give out my bank account
| details willy-nilly
|
| ---
|
| If you have influence over it, I wouldn't recommend having
| https://status.column.com/uptime default to "Sandbox" since I
| doubt seriously that's what anyone would care about when going to
| an uptime page, and can also mislead a reader in a hurry if the
| Sandbox environment is having woes but Production is fine
|
| nit: I would guess you meant "sweep" not "sweet" on
| https://column.com/bank-accounts
|
| > We support FBO, sweet, clearing and custom account types -- all
| FDIC insured.
| Brystephor wrote:
| Credit card networks offer a similar thing. They call it
| payment network tokens. Basically, the network gives the
| merchant/processor/store/etc a Uuid string that's an identifier
| for your credit card. Then the merchant sends that UUID string
| (the token) to the network and the network sends the real
| credit card details to the issuer for authorization.
|
| So instead of giving merchants real financial info, they just
| get a pass to charge your credit card without the details of
| it.
| mdaniel wrote:
| Yes, I've been making heavy use of that over the years, from
| Amex's early offering through Privacy.com and now Capital
| One's anemic offering
|
| There's still quite a few merchants which give it the evil
| eye since evidently one can distinguish them from "real"
| credit cards if the processor chooses to look, but it's
| better than nothing
|
| Column is the first I've ever heard of a bank offering this
| level of financial firewalling
| theonething wrote:
| Yeah, I use Privacy extensively and on rare occasions have
| been rejected by merchants because of their no gift cards
| allowed policy. So apparently that is the category Privacy
| virtual cards come under.
| skybrian wrote:
| Some context: Patio11 wrote a bit about how businesses can use
| virtual account numbers this week:
|
| > This is generally done via a mechanism called Virtual Bank
| Accounts (VBAs), which are a product available from the banking
| industry in Japan, the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, and many other
| countries. You contract with your financial institution of
| choice to reserve a block of bank account numbers corresponding
| to a far smaller number of actual bank accounts. You give out
| those numbers to your customers rather than giving out your
| "real" bank account number. You then take action based on which
| account number your customers use.
|
| > Due to technical and social issues within the financial
| industry, the banks offering VBAs generally expect you to bring
| your own implementation work at this point. Should you e.g. re-
| use VBAs within your block? They probably don't have a
| straightforward answer to that question; up to you. Should you
| treat them as secrets? Up to you. Should you share them between
| customers? Up to you. What should you do once you know one of
| your VBAs has received a transfer? The bank will give you your
| money, what you do with the data is up to you.
|
| > Stripe does basically the simplest thing that works: give
| each customer/business pairing a unique VBA, shared across all
| invoices for that pairing (to avoid e.g. a customer not
| updating their supplier management system with the new bank
| account number on the second month's invoice). Use ability to
| introspect invoices (and their open/closed/etc state) and
| inferences to tie incoming payments to the invoice they're most
| likely associated with. Kick all the exceptions to a human or
| computer system, whichever the user specifies.
|
| https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/a-game-that-intentionally-...
| whockey wrote:
| I'm glad you noticed the account numbers as pointers concept -
| we think its pretty cool. I think there's some rad use cases
| that people will come up with!
|
| Thanks on the typo...deploying now :0
| rundmc wrote:
| We have been looking for a US banking provider that could
| handle this. Woo hoo.
|
| In RoW they are called virtual IBANs. Numerous use cases.
| nickprins wrote:
| One that I recently found out about is reconciliation from
| https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/a-game-that-
| intentionally-...
| Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote:
| This is great. I designed a similar system at Simple and it
| pained me that it never got implemented.
| ahallock wrote:
| Can someone re-create Simple with this? I loved that service.
| wmf wrote:
| I wonder how Column managed to launch when others couldn't. Were
| the others too early?
| dugmartin wrote:
| I created an account just to check it out and the signup and
| initial setup flow is very well done. Nice work.
| ianstormtaylor wrote:
| Wow, this is such an impressive launch/reveal in so many ways...
| landing pages, documentation, philosophy, sheer scope. Congrats
| to everyone on the team for the quality of execution!
| chirau wrote:
| What exactly is this? What does it allow me to do as a developer?
| Is this similar to the stuff Stripe offers?
|
| I've been looking at the site and trying to figure it out, no
| luck.
| fierro wrote:
| its for developers looking to build financial products that
| need bank accounts, payments, card issuing, lending, etc.
| Imagine you wanted to build Venmo; this would be pretty easy
| with Column APIs. Create bank accounts, deposit/withdraw, and
| send money between accounts programatically. That's probably
| the simplest example I can think of.
| [deleted]
| monkeycantype wrote:
| Long ago I was part of a team (but not the first core team) that
| built a pension and investment system from scratch , because
| there were no banking APIs available from anyone, we convinced a
| bank to let's us connect to them as an ATM
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