Developer-Friendly Banks? 158
tyen writes "Any suggestions for a 'developer-friendly' bank for small businesses? The banking world is awash in data protocols that business customers who are/have coders would find useful, like BAI to extract all the raw data from an ACH or SWIFT transfer. Unfortunately, the ones I have spoken with about this access are still stuck in the Dark Ages of computing; they price the access like only big companies still have the skills to tap into these interfaces. For example, one of the four US banks with a perfect trading record this past quarter quoted us USD five figures for access to several of our accounts via BAI format. Per year. After waiving sign-up fees. Are there any banks out there that have a more progressive attitude about letting small, entrepreneurial developers work with their business accounts in a more modern, dare we say automated, way? With big businesses demanding EFT integration from small business vendors, and globalization rewarding premiums to nimble, lean businesses that automate wherever possible, automating the retrieval of this information (which is not available in consumer-oriented access like OFX) becomes an increasingly pressing issue for the small guys."
Good Luck with that. (Score:5, Interesting)
Banking thrives on secrecy. That last thing they want are outsiders poking around with their data and protocols - lord know what you might find. You best bet would be to hit up the next bank president you come across on the golf course (private - not public). Barring that you could try dealing with one of the online banks like ING or perhaps a credit union?
What do you expect... (Score:5, Interesting)
... they're in it for the money.
Very few small clients will access their accounts in that way. As such, the service is priced with the large client in mind. They will not drop the fees for a small client because then the larger clients would insist that they drop the fees for them, too. Plus, it's a pain in the butt to administer the "small fish" they might pull in by lowering their fees.
Tell you what... You think this is a brilliant way to make money? Open your own bank. It's actually legal (and relatively easy) in this country. It's a good time to open a small bank, too - people are sick of the big banks. Find a backer and let them know that there's this underserved banking market out there. I'm sure you'll find plenty of takers if the idea is a good one.
But, in general, the main reason a banking service isn't offered to you is because the service isn't profitable enough to offer it to the market you're part of.
Re:What do you expect... (Score:3, Interesting)
Tell you what... You think this is a brilliant way to make money? Open your own bank. It's actually legal (and relatively easy) in this country. It's a good time to open a small bank, too - people are sick of the big banks. Find a backer and let them know that there's this underserved banking market out there. I'm sure you'll find plenty of takers if the idea is a good one.
But, in general, the main reason a banking service isn't offered to you is because the service isn't profitable enough to offer it to the market you're part of.
I would second this. Seriously, if someone were to start a geek-friendly bank, with reasonable terms, I would seriously consider using it, and I've got quite a few friends who would as well.
The issue, as mentioned, is finding a backer. To open a bank, you have to have a certain amount of cash on-hand, and that's where the sticking point comes for most of us, otherwise we'd all open banks.
DIY Credit Union (Score:5, Interesting)
ACH (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not know about stupid bank fees, but I recall that ACH is as you say extremely well documented. And there is a setup for a testing protocol built in. There is a spec book that I imagine is say $100 and freely available. If you were not particular about language or schedule or, what is the word, maybe track record, I figure you are talking $10k to do the client software from scratch. If you want it done this quarter in C++ by a name, say $200k. But no real cost analysis here. This was a long time ago, but I think I called my bank to see what sort of obstacles they would put up. As best I understood from a single conversation, there were no obstacles or fees. I suppose it might be relevant that there were personal relationships. For what it is worth this was a regional chain and if you want the name, email me.
Re:ACH (Score:4, Interesting)
I've worked with various Multicash/MT920/940 variants. It was many moons ago, but I seem to remember that they're pretty well documented.
Sometimes a bank also offers a simpler format - often a CSV. These are aimed at small/medium businesses between those that are big enough to run a beast like SAP or Oracle Financials and small ones that have so few transactions that they key them manually via the web or at an ATM. Normally the documentation for those formats are available to customers. I know because I did it once.
To be honest (and it's hardly unusual on "ask slashdot") I'm not quite sure what problem the OP is trying to solve. Does he work for a company that wants to automate its banking, or is he seeing some kind of opportunity to develop third party software? Is he trying to bypass the bank and get right into the SWIFT/ACH etc "backbone"? I believe it's possible for non-banks, but the bar is exceedingly high - good luck with that.
Banks providing ACH access (Score:2, Interesting)
many are free
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/714617/
Re:DIY Credit Union (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of those derivatives really are treated as lotto tickets (you brought up options), and the those MBS tied to the CDS really were sold in a fictitious way (using imaginary non-truths). Yes, GPP likes to talk. That doesn't make him wrong.
Do you work for Goldman Sachs? You sound just like them.
Re:DIY Credit Union (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe they got keynes wrong?
Under a Keynesian model, the government sets policies that will charge up an economy when the private sector is in a bug slump. However, the government should also try to cool down the economy when it grows too fast, precisely to contain possible bubbles. You can't really do what Keynes suggested by just looking at one side of the coin, which is what we saw for the last decade and a half.
Now, you could argue that the Keynesian model still fails due to the complexity of the market, or because the government intervention can be gained, but at least describe it right.
What might this look like? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll state at a high level that I work for a Credit Union, and there are a lot of us that believe in a model such as the one you are describing. Can I take this discussion in a slightly different direction? Rather than "where can I get this today", how about "what would you want from a service like this"? Reply with a list of features and describe the problem you are trying to solve.
Do you want to only access your own account, or offer a service to multiple customers of the financial institution?
Are you thinking along the lines of web services?
What type of transactions would you want - realtime (i.e. what's my account balance now) or batch (show me all transactions for the last 6 months)?
Are you talking about wire transfers, ACH, checks, etc?
Are you thinking a pull model, where you query into the data or a push model, where you are alerted when things happen?
Don't get dragged down in any pricing or cost at this point - just tell me in more detail what you want.
Re:DIY Credit Union (Score:4, Interesting)
The government has been printing money for a long time, and banks did very well taking deposits and lending money during that time.
It was the deregulation that started around '80 when the banks really decided that investment banking was a better business than retail banking.
Re:Flash? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Friendly" and "Bank" in the same sentence? (Score:4, Interesting)
By and large, yes - but it's not impossible. Of course, it really depends what you're looking to do. Many merchant processors allow you to move money in and out of your account(s) via ACH, and plenty of them have APIs with varying degrees of crappiness. You'll find that initiating the transfers tends to be fairly straightforward with most of them; it's the reconciliation of which transfers actually went through that's a pain in the ass (download a rather nonsenisical CSV file over FTP that's only available after a seemingly random time of day, rather than just pinging an API every few hours with a cron job).
I'm currently working with a company called Check Gateway which has a pretty good API at least by bank standards and staff that's quite helpful and willing to do stuff that a lot of other processors aren't comfortable with.
I have no problem with that (Score:1, Interesting)
So, the underlying systems that most banks use are extremely robust after having been tested for decades and - very possibly - being a lot simplet than similar systems would be if they were coded today? That sounds pretty ideal situation, to be honest.
Does anyone actually want to do it? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems that there is an opportunity here.
Put up or shut up. Does anyone actually want to *make* the geek friendly bank?
According to the almighty internet, we would need (depending on the state) about $5mil starting capital. About 10-20% of that comes directly from the founders, the rest can come from shareholders.
We would need some founders who have cash, some who have the knowledge and ability to implement the system, some who have the ability to *run* the system, some with the ability to negotiate the legal and procedural, and some with the ability to deal with personal interaction.
If a reasonable project plan were available, I could be one of the cash founders of the bank.
Anyone else?
Re:DIY Credit Union (Score:3, Interesting)
However, does this mean that derivatives as a whole should be banned?
Only the most ill informed make that claim. Rest assured that I do not. Certain classes of derivatives need to be reevaluated (and regulated at a minimum).
... I try to follow the ongoing investigation. An executive officer of Goldman Sachs made the statement, "We gave our customers as much risk as they wanted." I certainly don't know whether the customers knew the risks (that seems to be what's under investigation), but on face value, that statement is exactly the goal of an investment firm.
Then you know that the deregulation PopeRatzo referred to (with no specificity whatsoever) was the separation between commercial and investment banking. His depiction was certainly long-winded, over-simplified, and lacked some accuracy, but is very close to what happened.
And yes, Goldman's made that claim. That is the theory -- providing reward-potential tied to risk to investors. Personally, I think their employees knew they were selling junk. They don't hold sole responsibility for the meltdown, but I believe they own a share of it. Saying "Our clients are sophisticated" is no excuse for lying to them. (Sometimes the best of lies are to convince someone to ignore the truth.)
Re:DIY Credit Union (Score:2, Interesting)
Amen brother! And while the following posts seem to argue the validity of derivatives, the are purposely designed to confuse and mislead the average person. You can find interview after interview with the people that actually work in these markets in which they acknowledge A)these are very confusing and hard to follow (in fact many of them do not fully understand all of the principles involved), and B) they are designed this way to avoid scrutiny and create "privacy by confusion" allowing banks and these markets to operate free from oversight.
Do derivatives and these markets have a valid place in our financial system? Possibly, and there is plenty of room for a healthy debate on the topic. Do they have any business being mixed in with the average "deposit and loan" community bank? Absolutely not. The greed and arrogance of these banks is amazing. The previous post to which I am responding is correct about banks not being happy making money as they have for years and years. Now they have to generate fees and purposely try to mislead their customers so they can rack up said fees. I know my bank, soon to be former bank, now charges a yearly fee on my "free account, no matter what balance I keep. It is not enough that I never write checks, so all my banking online, live by my debit card (on which they make money), and use direct deposit. They now have to hold my direct deposit for an extra day before I can access it. NO longer is the money there at midnight, it is available sometime between a few hours to a day later (kind of like the cable guy). The bank cannot even tell me when it will be available.
I feel that it is sad to say, but the only way to move forward seems to be with a credit union. At least then I can, god forbid, use my money when I need it. Rather than argue amongst ourselves about derivatives, let us agree on a common conclusion: the banks are now in the business of screwing all of us over, and business is booming...