[HN Gopher] Increase: Banking API
___________________________________________________________________
Increase: Banking API
Author : pen2l
Score : 263 points
Date : 2022-09-13 18:53 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (increase.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (increase.com)
| EGreg wrote:
| Only in USA ? Or what
| amccloud wrote:
| How is this different from Stripe Treasury?
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Who are the target customers of Stripe Treasury? Existing banks
| who are fully ultra integrated with legacy mainframe offerings?
|
| Who is looking into open a new bank/credit union and like...
| how much money is needed? How do you compete with Ally or any
| other "online" bank? How do you build trust and get people to
| give you their money, and for what benefit to them?
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't see how this addresses the problem of building trust,
| though.
| moneywoes wrote:
| How is this different
| arthurcolle wrote:
| is this like Column?
| jo6gwb wrote:
| Looks more like a Bond, Unit, Synapse.
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| https://column.com/
|
| For those that don't know what Column is.
| sebmellen wrote:
| It appears to be virtually the same service as Column, but they
| lack their own bank.
| wcoenen wrote:
| Is this like Vodeno in europe? When looking at job listings, I
| realized that Aion Bank appears to be just a marketing wrapper
| around Vodeno, which handles all the administration, technical
| stuff and even banking license and customer support.
| pen2l wrote:
| 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.
| anon1094 wrote:
| That's Benjamin De Cock. For the folks interested he documents
| a lot of his process on Twitter.
|
| https://twitter.com/bdc/status/1546866502225346560
| holler wrote:
| Now it makes sense how their landing page is so impressive, and
| also reminds me of Stripe design.
| benjamindc wrote:
| Thank you, means a lot :)
| pen2l wrote:
| 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.
| benjamindc wrote:
| Thank you, I'm glad you like it! I try to find a good
| balance between form and function, and create a
| consistent environment for the customer. The homepage is
| definitely more "artistic" than the dashboard, for
| instance, but hopefully they clearly belong to the same
| brand and give you a similar look and feel.
|
| (For the anecdote and because you mentioned it, it always
| annoyed me that we had a pretty different visual language
| at Stripe between the site and the dashboard. I designed
| Stripe's homepage but not its dashboard, whereas I did
| both at the same time for Increase. Consistency is really
| hard to achieve between multiple products as the optimal
| visual treatment is different for a site and an
| information-dense UI.)
| pbreit wrote:
| I wonder who else is behind this?
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/company/increasebank/people/
| pen2l wrote:
| There appear to be some ex-Stripe people, some from Visa and
| some from other fintech places.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| I wonder if these banking startups are part of the fallout of the
| leadership exodus at Stripe that has been happening recently?
| londons_explore wrote:
| I made an API for a bank... I was a third party and made the API
| by screen scraping their webUI. I sent their devs a link and
| initially there were positive messages going back and forth.
|
| The API allowed you to see balance, transaction history, and make
| payments.
|
| Before long, the API got quite popular, and lots of people were
| using it to make lots of payments automatically.
|
| You know what makes money laundering super easy... a banking API
| so you can split the million dollars you want to launder into 1
| million 1 dollar payments. And an API client which lets you treat
| each login cookie and account as an object in python.
|
| Before long, the API and all users who had ever used it were
| perma-banned from the bank, because it was determined they posed
| too high a fraud/money-laundering risk.
|
| I'm still salty because, after spending a week of my life
| building and refining that API, they banned me and _6 years
| later_ still claim they can 't return the $350 that was in the
| account because they are still 'investigating'.
| redox99 wrote:
| I hate to be "that guy", but this is why I hate banks and like
| crypto. Both the fact that crypto is obviously trivial to
| automate, and that banks can unilaterally ban you and steal
| your money.
| rutierut wrote:
| It's pretty easy to not "ban you and steal your money" when
| you're not required/able to prevent people from laundering
| money/evading taxes.
| kinjba11 wrote:
| Doesn't crypto have the same problem, with money laundering
| and other crimes? If you lose money with crypto, there is no
| one to sue nor government insurance.
| redox99 wrote:
| > Doesn't crypto have the same problem, with money
| laundering and other crimes?
|
| I don't see how that's the same problem? They are clearly
| separate, distinct problems.
|
| There are obviously both advantages and disadvantages to
| both crypto and banking. As someone who lives in a country
| that has been through a lot of bullshit, I highly value the
| fact that the bank can't just take away my money.
| taberiand wrote:
| Crypto of course being famously free of fraud and theft, with
| no tendency at all towards coalescing control around a small,
| centralised set of decision makers.
| blantonl wrote:
| No good deed does unpunished.
| yboris wrote:
| I think this is one of the most unfortunate memes that people
| for some reason still continue to share.
|
| Think about what it teaches children when they hear it? What
| kind of a world view does it instill? By saying the phrase
| you are _explicitly_ communicating the idea that it is (at
| least is some sense) better to not do good deeds.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I don't think people are out there teaching kids to live
| their lives by this mantra. It's not intended to be a life
| philosophy, more of a bleak and darkly humorous
| observation. Sure, it's not always true, but it sure does
| feel like it sometimes.
|
| Kind of like "life's a bitch, and then you die", it's not
| meant to be taken too seriously.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Search for "woman murdered while helping motorist".
|
| There are too many evil people to willfully ignore the
| dangers of helping others. You should always, always be
| aware of the risks you're putting yourself in any
| situation. In life, in work, in family, it doesn't matter.
| And yes, that's worth teaching children.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Sometimes you get something positive out of helping a
| stranger too... A new friend, a favour in return, or
| simply experience of doing something new/different.
|
| As long as the positives outweigh the dangers, it's worth
| doing.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Won't somebody think of the children?! ;)
| JohnFen wrote:
| > You know what makes money laundering super easy... a banking
| API so you can split the million dollars you want to launder
| into 1 million 1 dollar payments.
|
| That would be noticed. It's called "structuring" and is itself
| illegal. Banks watch for this stuff.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Yes, but when your script splits money into random amounts
| and puts things like "pizza money", "rent" and "happy
| birthday" into the reference field, across thousands of
| accounts, most of whom also have a real user doing real
| transactions intermingled, suddenly it gets a lot harder for
| the bank to filter.
|
| The bank typically has a rather simplistic set of rules to
| decide to investigate transactions (because they need to be
| able to explain how the rules work in a meeting with the
| government whenever their rules miss someone). Things like
| "Transaction was over $1000 to a new payee or the reference
| contained the word 'bitcoin'". The investigation will
| typically involve a human calling the customer, and sometimes
| asking for more evidence of what the transfer was for - for
| example, please send us the receipt for the car you said you
| bought. It's quite an expensive process for the bank.
|
| So, when someone via the API sends tens of thousands of
| transfers, the bank is spending lots of human hours verifying
| some/all of those. "My script sent $55 to some stranger
| because I won a fully automated bet on the weather" is far
| harder to verify with documentation too. And when some slip
| through the cracks, they get in trouble with the regulator.
| b8ZLPMRFnnfID4M wrote:
| That's silly. You could just as easily to the same thing
| with checks, or even cards.
| MalcolmDwyer wrote:
| Millions of checks or millions of cards is "just as easy"
| as millions of API calls?
| jtbayly wrote:
| How do the launderers have access to thousands of accounts?
| And why wouldn't the actual owners of the accounts report
| the transactions?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| The api seems to let you create new accounts fairly
| easily. Seems odd to me as the API provider is the bank.
| Based on KYC I presume they think they are all splits of
| the same account holder?
|
| I learned the other day that the name on account means
| shit, because scammers often give $account_details +
| $catfish_name and receive the money to $bank_details +
| $real_name.
|
| I don't see how splitting to 1000 transactions and
| sending money to yourself helps with money laundering or
| undercover money sending.
| londons_explore wrote:
| You normally start an ad campaign across facebook
| offering discount beauty products but you need to
| 'enable' this 'security software' onto your bank
| account...
| lisper wrote:
| Heh, you got off easy. I spent _six years of actual work_
| learning this lesson the hard way back in 2006-2012.
|
| In retrospect, I should have paid a lot more attention when
| Patric Collison told me he was spending his days reading up
| banking regulations. Eh, too boring, I thought, what could
| possibly be in there that a little code couldn't paper over?
| That mistake cost me the opportunity to be an early hire at
| Stripe.
| c7b wrote:
| Contact the FDIC rather than the bank next time, I've heard of
| cases where that helped.
| jjcm wrote:
| A part of me really wants you to check in with them every year,
| to see how long they can claim they're "still investigating"
| for.
|
| This is great insight though re: money laundering. Something
| I'd have never expected would be the result of an API.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Don't worry... I do...
|
| The guy assigned to my case retired. As did the next guy. And
| now there is a lady assigned to the case, but she has been
| out of the office for all of the last 3 years...
|
| Every time I call, I get told they can't discuss cases over
| the phone, but that they will send me a paper letter as an
| update... And it isn't a template letter either... But it
| always just says I need to keep waiting and there is no
| action I can take to speed the process up...
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| What would happen if you took them to small claims court?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Not really worth the 2 days off work it would take (1 to
| learn the necessary law/rules/procedures, and one to
| actually attend court).... Although if I'm bored in the
| future I might.
| claytongulick wrote:
| I heard of a case where a person did this and won their
| claim in small claims court, the defendant (I think it
| was Verizon?) never showed up.
|
| They got a default judgement, but still couldn't actually
| collect the amount owed.
|
| So they ended up filing a foreclosure on the actual
| building - and it worked! The foreclosure went through,
| and the company almost lost their brick and mortar store.
|
| Took years for the process, but it was nice to see that
| the courts can and will defend an individual. This all
| took place in TX IIRC.
| redavni wrote:
| You need to send a request in writing.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Or contact the financial ombudsman assuming this is in
| the uk.
| spydum wrote:
| so, treasury management systems exist for big corps (FIS,
| FIServe, GTreasury, etc), and some banks do have legit apis for
| cash flow mgmt (payments transfers etc). i think problem is
| most dont want the hassle of supporting it for consumers.
| alaxic wrote:
| me_bx wrote:
| Is there any information on the website about the company
| providing the service, and/or its founder(s)? I found the
| official name "Increase, Inc" in the privacy policy page, but
| nothing more.
|
| Aren't these fundamentals to build trust, especially for a B2B
| banking product?
| c7b wrote:
| It sounds cool, but I don't fully understand: is this a fully-
| fledged US bank (with a banking license, FDIC insurance,
| audited,...) that allows you to do all banking transactions
| through an API, or is this a framework that you can use if you
| are already a bank to expose all your transactions through an
| API, or something else?
| [deleted]
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| They are not a full-fledged bank, they partner with banks to
| provide the FDIC insurance, etc.
|
| There are a number of competitors in this "Banking as a
| Service" API space like Treasury Prime and Galileo.
| Ayesh wrote:
| I think they provide a backend so you can issue your own cards,
| with bank accounts routable through normal banking systems.
| Payoneer famously rely on third party "back-end" banks for
| their services, as they issue cards, offer routable bank
| accounts, cash withdrawal, etc.
|
| This is an extremely niche use case of course, but it's not the
| first time they popped up on HN at least.
|
| In mobile ISPs, MVNOs are quite common, and there is a large
| amount of customer base because they simplify KYC, sales, and
| customer on-boarding. Technically, this API should provide the
| platform to build a similar "Virtual bank". I do not think
| anybody without a significant technical and financial resources
| will be able to pull it off.
|
| Another use case I can think of are market places like ebay,
| Amazon, Aliexpress, etc. Each seller receive a bank account
| that they get their payments deposited to, and can be withdrawn
| from their branded card. I do not see this being a commercially
| viable option for many, because pretty much every country has
| free or almost free systems in place to simply transfer money,
| and not take the unnecessary burden of issue cards, maintaining
| bank accounts, etc. Payoneer used to run a similar program,
| with branded cards, custom fee structures, etc, but it
| eventually failed as far as I know.
| chadash wrote:
| curl -X "POST" \ --url
| https://api.increase.com/check_transfers \ -H
| "Authorization: Bearer ${INCREASE_API_KEY}" \ -H
| "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d $'{
| "account_id": "account0", "address_line1": "33
| Liberty Street", "address_city": "New York",
| "address_state": "NY", "address_zip": "10045",
| "amount": 1000, "message": "Check payment",
| "recipient_name": "Ian Crease" }'
|
| Well it would certainly be nice if I can send a rent check
| from my command line!
| [deleted]
| Shindi wrote:
| How is this different than
|
| Column
|
| Stripe Treasury
|
| Treasury Prime
|
| Unit
|
| Cross River Bank
|
| Any BaaS I'm missing?
|
| ???
| ianhawes wrote:
| Synapse FI (https://synapsefi.com) -- They have been around for
| awhile.
| mousetree wrote:
| They use MongoDB for their ledger. Was not fun for us.
| alexjplant wrote:
| My alma mater Moov Financial [0]. They also have a bunch of
| neat OSS libraries on GitHub [1].
|
| [0] https://moov.io
|
| [1] https://github.com/moov-io
| [deleted]
| spraveenitpro wrote:
| Entinel wrote:
| I think by the amount of "what is this" questions in this thread
| it's pretty clear the messaging is confusing to say the least.
| I'm going to pile on because even with the explanations in this
| thread I don't really understand what this is. Is this for B2C or
| B2B? Is this something I, the average consumer who happens to be
| a developer, could use to build my own personal finance tools?
| zachthewf wrote:
| 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 API, which lets you avoid having to write
| code that hooks into payment rails, interfaces with credit card
| manufacturers, stores credit card numbers, etc. Now you can
| focus on the differentiating aspects of your user base instead
| of building common banking infra.
|
| There are a bunch of companies that offer banking APIs as a
| service already. The most popular of these is Galileo, a 20
| year old company that was recently acquired by SoFi [1]. The
| developer experience of Galileo is absolute trash. I haven't
| used any other companies first hand but I've heard they're not
| much better. So presumably Increase is trying to provide an
| actually good developer experience for devs building banking
| products.
|
| [0] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/seis [1]
| https://www.sofi.com/press/sofi-to-acquire-galileo
| swyx wrote:
| 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 right?
| mousetree wrote:
| None, you won't be a bank. You'll need to work with another
| bank (directly) or via some BaaS that has a pre-existing
| relationship with a bank.
|
| Depending on who "manages the program" you'll probably
| still have significant work to do our your side related to
| KYC and Compliance. You can offload this to the BaaS if
| they have a pre-existing relationship with a sponsoring
| bank but then you have very limited latitude to change how
| your perform KYC etc.
|
| For context, when we started, straight out of YC we worked
| with a company called Synapse (synapsefi.com) who had a
| pre-existing relationship with Evolve (sponsor bank) and
| managed our entire program. They were responsible for KYC,
| fraud, compliance etc. We basically built an app on top of
| their APIs.
|
| As we grew we needed more control and a direct relationship
| with a bank (this also improves the unit economics). We now
| manage the entire program and the payment rails part and
| banking APIs are maybe only 5% of the work involved (even
| within engineering a huge portion of our time is on
| fraud/compliance/kyc etc).
| [deleted]
| zachthewf wrote:
| These startups are not actually banks--they will partner
| with banks that fulfill those capital requirements. For
| example, the Robinhood debit card is issued by Sutton Bank
| [0], a 100 year old bank in Ohio that very successfully
| provided the backing bank to a bunch of hot new fintech
| products.
|
| So you would have to go through Sutton bank or another
| bank, but I think there are enough of these companies now
| that there's a fairly tried and true path. If you're
| seriously investigating this I can connect you to people
| who know more about it than I do.
|
| [0] https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/robinhood-
| debit... and ctrl+f "Sutton"
| unethical_ban wrote:
| 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
| bob1029 wrote:
| > 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 right?
|
| If you want to start an _actual_ bank, you need a charter
| from the FDIC. This is commonly referred to as a De Novo
| bank. Also known as "virtually impossible".
| zhivota wrote:
| Increase will have to partner with banks to provide the
| service, so you won't have to be an actual capitalized bank
| yourself, and you won't have to go find one. You can see in
| the fine print at the bottom of their page:
|
| "Bank accounts and banking services are provided by
| Increase's partner banks, members FDIC."
|
| The only way they can provide all this functionality is to
| do all the hard work of integrating with whatever legacy
| junk the partner bank is running (along with all the Visa
| stuff, Stripe stuff, and whatever else they are using
| here). You could actually do this yourself, and some
| fintechs are attempting that, but it's very hard and
| expensive due to the PCI-DSS requirements, among other
| things.
|
| I'll be curious to see if they will require their customers
| to have PCI-DSS or if they'll be able to tokenize
| everything in a way that doesn't require it. When I worked
| at Visa the big issue was that handling card data, even
| after tokenization, required PCI-DSS, which of course makes
| no sense, but the immune systems around the payments
| industry takes a long time to change.
| mousetree wrote:
| Would love to chat with you about your experience with
| Galileo. About two years back we decided to NOT go with
| Galileo and went with another provider. Absolute trash too
| and now we're going to go looking around again - which at our
| current scale is not going to be pleasant. Would be great to
| trade notes (email in my profile).
| zachthewf wrote:
| Funnily enough the company I worked at also switched to
| Galileo from another provider that was even worse.
|
| Shooting you an email now.
| swyx wrote:
| or is it like a Plaid in the sense that you could build a
| Robinhood ontop of Plaid... or are you meant to be starting
| like an "MVNO Bank"... so many questions
|
| honestly i dont think its their fault, this is such an alien
| space to most of us that we just need more handholding than
| normal
| dedoussis wrote:
| How is this different to Stripe's Banking-as-a-Service product?
| fibonacc wrote:
| How can Canadian developers use this to gain access to US
| markets?
| randomcatuser wrote:
| I'm a bit confused about why one would want to do this! If you
| become your own bank, what are the pieces you have to do
| yourself? (I imagine things like fraud?)
| dang wrote:
| Submitted title was "Increase: Become your own bank". Since
| that seems to be a bit confusing and I don't see that text on
| the page, I've reverted the title to what the page says.
| zhivota wrote:
| Yeah it's one of those things where it's not technically
| correct, but it's probably correct from the user's point of
| view. Customers of Increase will look a lot like a bank to an
| end user, but they'll be 2 layers removed from the actual
| bank, and everything they do will mention the actual bank's
| name on it for FDIC/regulatory purposes.
| mousetree wrote:
| FWIW, you won't be allowed to advertise yourself as a bank
| either.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It seems like a great tool for financial fraud, phising
| schemes, laundering. What non-nefarious uses would it have?
| impulser_ wrote:
| You're not actually becoming a bank. They are just providing an
| API so you can act like a bank. Your money is still going to be
| held by an actual bank. The banking services are still being
| provided by an actual bank.
| hbcondo714 wrote:
| Yeah, accounts are with First Internet Bank or Blue Ridge
| Bank:
|
| https://increase.com/terms
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Really curious who does the design for Increase! Do you guys have
| a founding designer?
| songeater wrote:
| from TOS [0]:
|
| Increase is not a chartered depository institution. We work with
| our partner banks to provide depository and payment services.
| When you open an Increase account, you agree to the Increase
| Terms of Service below. When you use the Increase service to set
| up a deposit account, the account is with First Internet Bank or
| Blue Ridge Bank and is subject to your agreement with the Bank
| Terms below. Finally, Increase's use of your personal information
| is described in the Privacy Policy below.
|
| [0] https://increase.com/terms
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| From reading the comments there are two groups of people. People
| who don't know what a banking API is and why you'd need one. And
| people who do but don't understand how Increase is different from
| existing Banking API / Banking As A Service solutions. I'm in the
| latter.
| craftkiller wrote:
| Doesn't look like they provide an API for any sort of brokerage
| services. I have written a lot of sqlite to track my progress
| with buying/selling stock options but the biggest pain point for
| me is transcribing my transactions into my sqlite database. If
| they expand their API to brokerage services then this could be a
| killer feature for me.
| mauz wrote:
| Seems to be similar to Modern Treasury [1]. Are the use-cases
| similar between Increase and [1]?
|
| [1]: https://www.moderntreasury.com/
| mousetree wrote:
| Modern Treasury don't offer any card rails.
| PKop wrote:
| Stripe for neobanks
| mousetree wrote:
| Stripe are already in the game themselves with Stripe Issuing
| and Treasury
| alberth wrote:
| > "Our API faithfully exposes the data and capabilities of the
| Federal Reserve, Visa, The Clearing House, depository networks,
| and accounting tools. It's lovingly boring and exceptionally
| powerful."
|
| Two questions:
|
| 1. How is this different than Open Banking?
|
| 2. Why is Visa referenced / why isn't Mastercard included? (Is it
| because Mastercard owns Finicity, and Open Banking service)
| bankapilead wrote:
| I led a team building a similar thing for one of the existing big
| three bank technology companies. Hope you've got backpressure and
| all the compliance work locked-in. Outages and some serious
| audits are in your future integrating with those more legacy bank
| cores.
|
| Wish your team all the best! This sort of innovation /
| competition is needed in that space.
| sv123 wrote:
| Looks cool, but having trouble wrapping my head around a
| potential use case for this.
| chocolatkey wrote:
| 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 save me a
| lot of time and reduce potential for mistakes during data entry
| swyx wrote:
| 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)
| chocolatkey wrote:
| 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.
| adventured wrote:
| > Stripe/Braintree are ways to charge customers on their
| credit/debit card on your website
|
| Stripe has a banking as a service segment now -
|
| https://stripe.com/treasury
| chocolatkey wrote:
| That looks reasonable, having worked with Stripe's APIs
| before I know that part would at least be nice. But I am
| worried about pricing with the "contact sales". If they
| charged per transfer initiated that would be a
| dealbreaker.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Have you seen https://www.deel.com? Might be a solution for
| this problem.
| pen2l wrote:
| That, Payoneer (which has a sufficiently extensive API),
| and I think Stripe can also handle payouts:
| https://stripe.com/connect/marketplaces
|
| (possibly I'm misreading Stripe marketplaces' offerings,
| please correct me if I am)
| chocolatkey wrote:
| Payoneer is one of the options we use to pay freelancers,
| in fact many of them quite like it, but for the
| freelancers' sake, I prefer 100% free methods like Zelle
| or ACH where possible because you have to pay a fee to
| take money out of payoneer you receive. At least it's
| better than paypal
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Is TransferWise an option?
| pen2l wrote:
| Zelle takes a considerable percentage cut for non-
| personal transactions.
|
| Do you make use of Payoneer API for payouts? How do you
| find it?
| chocolatkey wrote:
| I use Zelle through the BoA small business account's web
| interface, there is no charge. I tried getting Zelle API
| access through US Bank but they never replied so I'm
| stuck with BoA web.
|
| Payoneer is really cagey about how you unlock better
| features, our account got upgraded to VIP though because
| we pay a lot through it. We still use their interface,
| maybe I'll figure out how to get their API someday
| chocolatkey wrote:
| $49/contract per month is just way way too much, sorry.
| Some freelancers don't even get paid that much in a month
| with the work they are doing. And with the churn we have as
| well, at a per contract rate we'd be pouring insane amounts
| of money into this solution. And they also aren't open
| about what payout payment methods they offer, that is not a
| good start.
| mousetree wrote:
| Is a payroll company not an option? I'm not from the US but
| presumably there are companies that can do this for you at a
| relatively low cost per employee?
| chocolatkey wrote:
| These are not employees, they're freelancers from all
| around the world.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It's notable that Monzo (UK fintech bank, but now in many
| countries) has a fairly complete but not really advertised API.
| Their mobile app uses the same API.
|
| If you need to know which emoji is most representative of the
| shop where you used your card 7 seconds ago, you can get sent
| that (and a lot of other data) in a webhook...
| ako wrote:
| Seems like bbaas, banking backend as a service, solves a
| significant need in the world, considering existing alternatives.
| For example in Europe there's Mambu that seems to do something
| similar.
|
| Not sure what the exact customer pain is here, could be that
| banks were the first to adopt IT and now have a large legacy
| where there is little value in rebuilding it with modern stacks,
| as it offers little competitive differentiation.
|
| Or maybe there's a need to quickly bring new banking products to
| market, and the backend stuff is so standardized that it's best
| to buy it off the shelve.
| mousetree wrote:
| There are lots of companies that are providing these BaaS in
| the US. Stripe, Modern Treasury, Treasury Prime, Lithic,
| SynapseFi, Gallileo, I2C come to mind. Probably another 20
| more.
|
| Then there's of course many CBS providers including the more
| modern ones like Mambu.
| darraghbuckley wrote:
| Thanks @op! Increase employee here:
|
| We're early days and not quite ready for open sign-ups yet
| (sorry, known bug). We'll be more public over the coming weeks
| and months.
|
| We're banking for developers; you can programatically create
| accounts, cards, and move money.
|
| Our users are primarily financial technology companies.
|
| We're a small team from Stripe, Robinhood, and Visa building the
| bank we always wanted. If this sounds interesting to you we're
| hiring: jobs@increase.com
|
| If I can be helpful, I'm at darragh@increase.com.
| Ayesh wrote:
| Do you consider non-US remote?
| darraghbuckley wrote:
| Certainly!
| mekoka wrote:
| _> Our users are primarily financial technology companies. _
|
| As a developer, I'd love to have some more information about
| the typical problems that inspired Increase's value
| proposition. If I was meeting with a financial tech CEO
| tomorrow, should I assume that they probably have these
| problems or need this service? Are there resources that I could
| peruse to learn more about these common problems?
| darraghbuckley wrote:
| Our users are financial technology companies. They build
| things like payroll, loan servicing, business payments,
| consumer payments, investment platforms, and neo-banks.
|
| When we built Stripe, one of the largest points of friction
| was getting a banking partner. It took months and only after
| signing were we even able to start assessing the technology.
| There are _so many_ potential companies that simply don 't
| make it past the partnership step. We want to fix that.
|
| The US needs a bank (holding a bank charter) that's also a
| technology company. Increase certainly isn't there yet
| (patches welcome: jobs@increase.com) but we already have
| integrations with the Federal Reserve, Visa, and The Clearing
| House. Our API already serves businesses you know and love.
| mousetree wrote:
| > The US needs a bank (holding a bank charter) that's also
| a technology company.
|
| Do you have plans on becoming a bank and getting a bank
| charter then? I've worked with several payment processors
| and BaaS providers that are most definitely not on that
| path. (CTO at neo bank).
| ahmadss wrote:
| do you have anyone on your enterprise BD/sales team? or is it
| too early for that type of role?
| codegeek wrote:
| Did you guys acquire the domain or did the founders always have
| it ?
| jackflintermann wrote:
| (Increase employee)
|
| We took the approach of starting with an intentionally bad
| name (in our case, bnk.dev) and using it until a good domain
| became available to purchase for a reasonable price.
|
| Related: http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html
| swyx wrote:
| heya! i'm casually interested in the space, and also have been
| tracking Column (https://column.com/)
|
| to a distant observer, you look similar, but i'm sure there are
| real differences between you, so I'd love something like a "top
| 3 things to note" about Increase vs Column, in a least-getting-
| you-in-trouble way as possible - its hard to compare because i
| dont know what I don't know.
| pbreit wrote:
| For one, Column is a bank.
| vinay_ys wrote:
| This is super important - if you are a chartered/regulated
| bank that's functioning currently then whatever you claim
| has merit. Otherwise it is just another software project
| that's going to struggle to get adoption because they won't
| have thought through all the regulatory and compliance
| issues.
| darraghbuckley wrote:
| Yes! We're obviously not the first to see the need!
|
| I think there are many engineers who are frustrated knowing
| the data and capabilities that exist in banking that aren't
| exposed programmatically.
|
| There are at least four (and I'm undoubtedly missing many!)
| interesting companies aiming to combine technology and a bank
| charter:
|
| - Luna[0].
|
| - M1 Finance[1].
|
| - Column[2].
|
| - Increase[3].
|
| Building a bank involves reading, understanding, and
| respecting regulation. It invovles integrating with large
| financial networks. It involves rallying a team for a years-
| long adventure. Each of these is early days and it'll be a
| few years before any of us understands how this super large
| and important problem will be solved.
|
| 0. https://www.americanbanker.com/news/former-square-exec-
| leads...
|
| 1. https://m1.com/blog/bank-and-board
|
| 2. https://column.com/
|
| 3. https://increase.com/
| bun_at_work wrote:
| Does this change KYC requirements or similar regulatory
| constraints that exist for implementing ACH transactions
| directly?
| bob1029 wrote:
| > 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.
| ktpsns wrote:
| Obviously the word " _anything_ that you can achieve ... " in
| your quote is an exaggeration. It is quite obvious that fintech
| wants to simplify the banking process to basic daily procedures
| most of the people need (like money transfer and accounting),
| and ignore the rest. It won't be the first FinTech doing so and
| it won't be the last. But it is one where "we want to have a
| high quality API" is the unique selling point.
| sofixa wrote:
| Traditional banks have literally decades of legacy to deal with
| which drags them down. Many neobanks have shown that it's
| possible to provide a better and cheaper service when you start
| from scratch. A few examples of features neobanks i use provide
| that traditional banks don't have - virtual cards on the fly,
| for free; SEPA Instant for free; Open API; smart dynamic
| budgeting and expense sharing.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > legacy to deal with which drags them down
|
| A non-zero amount of that legacy is due to regulations and
| compliance.
|
| Most of what a bank does is totally invisible to the end
| customer. A "neobank" is almost always just a shiny consumer-
| oriented facade in front of a grumpy old bank. _Someone_
| still has to follow all of those laws.
| sefrost wrote:
| What about Monzo or Starling in the UK? What is the grumpy
| old bank behind them?
| delusional wrote:
| > A non-zero amount of that legacy is due to regulations
| and compliance.
|
| Although there's a kernel of truth there, it's far from
| accurate. Most of the legacy is due to the assumption of
| regulations and compliance. The truth is that most of the
| systems are in fact out of compliance, but as long as you
| don't touch them the likelihood of a serious audit is
| small. The complexity is more about erecting an
| impenetrable wall to make the auditor assume it's probably
| compliant.
|
| It's essentially about overwhelming auditors with details
| to fatigue them. Not to dissimilar to when lawyers flood
| each other with documents in tv shows.
| arghwhat wrote:
| Conventional banks provide all of the above (including open
| banking API) except instant virtual cards here in
| Scandinavia, so nothing to do with building from scratch.
| Just a matter of priorities and healthy competition.
|
| The neobanks are all very incremental improvements, and is
| largely just packaging. E.g., Lunar being app-only obviously
| has a somewhat more modern app than the average bank.
| delusional wrote:
| I happen to work in a bank in Scandinavia, and you're both
| sort of right. We did at one point provide "open banking
| APIs" although we only ever approved one partner to use it,
| and have since shuttered it.
|
| The truth of the matter is that banking is horribly
| entrenched. Actual business decisions are mostly driven by
| arbitrary considerations of which laws to follow that day.
| Although we provide a ton of functionality and business
| capability, we are still woefully behind on any sort of
| compliance measure, not because compliance is hard or
| impossible, but because nobody is actually critically
| examining the systems.
|
| The problem for the "neobank" is not one of building
| technology to catch up. It's in cultivating an image where
| they are seen as systemically critical such that they will
| be afforded the same leniency in policing that the
| established sector already has.
| chadash wrote:
| > Accounts are eligible to receive interest on balances. The
| interest rate is the Federal Funds Target Rate less 50 basis
| points with a floor of 0%.
|
| Target rate right now is 2.25-2.50%, so i'm guessing that you are
| subtracting 50 BP from the lower end, so that's 1.75%. That's
| actually pretty good for a bank right now (not the highest, but
| certainly on the high _er_ end.
|
| One thing that's unclear... is this a checking account, savings,
| etc.?
| rthomas6 wrote:
| 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.
| Shindi wrote:
| 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.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| > 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.
| NavinF wrote:
| If you have at least 2 credit cards from the same bank (eg
| one card with $20k limit and 5% cashback on restaurants and
| another card with $10k limit and 2% cashback on all
| purchases), you can call the bank and tell them to move
| $19,800 of the credit limit from one card to the other.
| That way you can't spend over $200 without using the wrong
| card.
|
| Virtual debit cards are another ubiquitous solution, but
| they cost a lot more despite being free. Your option 3
| subsidizes smarter consumers when you pay full price (which
| has interchange fees built-in) on everything without
| getting any fees returned to you in the form of cashback.
|
| (One issue with my solution is that a lot of banks let you
| spend 2x your credit limit on visa signature and similar
| tier cards. In that case you'll have to reduce the limit to
| $100)
| mousetree wrote:
| Try privacy.com. Seems to be built for exactly this use
| case (disclosure: have not used it).
|
| (On a related note, to GP comment, Lithic was actually spun
| out of Privacy.com)
| sofixa wrote:
| What you're describing sounds like what most people refer
| to as virtual cards. Three of my banks provide that for
| free, even though only two allow setting up a per-card
| limit.
| Ycombigatorz wrote:
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