6 ms·

Net Banking fails Small Enterprises: many opportunities here.

13 points by olefoo 17y ago

steveklabnik 17y ago
I've been having some discussions with people lately about the concept of 'banking as a service.' Enable people to make a co-op of credit unions, and pool the resources together for things like online banking, iPhone ATM finding apps, and similar things...
rwhitman 17y ago
I agree about opportunity, online banking is my #1 reservation about going with smaller local banks. If there were a super-secure, super-stable, fully-featured product for smaller banks out there to leverage as their online banking platform it would be such a game-changer
- charliepark 17y ago
  Wesabe has actually done just this, with their Springboard product. http://www.wesabe.com/page/springboard http://www.wesabe.com/page/springboard
  - precipice 17y ago
    Thanks, Charlie. A better link these days is: https://www.getspringboard.com/ https://www.getspringboard.com/ We aren't really going after small business accounts (referring to the main article), at least not yet. I do think banking software has a ton of room to change.
tptacek 17y ago
What are the opportunities here? There is perhaps no area of technology more aggressively addressed by venture capital funded startups than electronic commerce security; not only that, but the market is moving slowly towards hardware solutions, which price out seed-stage first-attempt entrepreneurs. I totally believe there's an angle for startups vs. sucky online banking (customer service, flexibility, etc), but I don't think security is it.
- olefoo 17y ago
  You're right about the capital intensive nature of this market; and about how competitive it is. But it's also a very broad market and there are many niches that are not well served. The linked article points out that organizations and people whose liquid assets are in the range of $100,000 to $5,000,000 are particularly vulnerable if they don't keep on top of their network security; but most businesses in that range don't have full-time staff in that specialty and don't know enough to effectively deploy packaged solutions. The larger problem is that innovation in the banking sector is really hampered on multiple levels. It's highly regulated, consumers are relatively conservative; and on some level any offering in that market is asking customers to place their trust in entities they cannot possibly verify to handle their money responsibly. Note: did anybody catch the sidebar that referred to the "secure Ubuntu brower loaded from a USB Stick"?
  - tptacek 17y ago
    Again, the major banks are addressing this problem directly across all their customers. Some of them are doing it with hardware fobs, and some of them are doing it with "true-r" software multifactor auth. It's a top-of-mind problem in banking. It doesn't matter what segment of the banking customer base you're serving: you are up against extreme competition for banking security. I'm not saying there's no opportunity with small business banking. I'm sure the banks themselves are painful enough to deal with that a Wesabe-a-like has a good shot at capturing the market. (NB: banking security kind of in our wheelhouse at Matasano).
ars 17y ago
"We're not entirely sure who ended up with the funds." How is that possible? Can't electronic money be fully traced?
- olefoo 17y ago
  Across multiple transactions, through multiple jurisdictions, in cases where not all of the entities involved are acting in good faith? Not easily.
- tptacek 17y ago
  No.

13 points by olefoo 17y ago

I've been having some discussions with people lately about the concept of 'banking as a service.' Enable people to make a co-op of credit unions, and pool the resources together for things like online banking, iPhone ATM finding apps, and similar things...

rwhitman 17y ago

I agree about opportunity, online banking is my #1 reservation about going with smaller local banks. If there were a super-secure, super-stable, fully-featured product for smaller banks out there to leverage as their online banking platform it would be such a game-changer

charliepark 17y ago
Wesabe has actually done just this, with their Springboard product. http://www.wesabe.com/page/springboard http://www.wesabe.com/page/springboard
- precipice 17y ago
  Thanks, Charlie. A better link these days is: https://www.getspringboard.com/ https://www.getspringboard.com/ We aren't really going after small business accounts (referring to the main article), at least not yet. I do think banking software has a ton of room to change.

tptacek 17y ago

What are the opportunities here? There is perhaps no area of technology more aggressively addressed by venture capital funded startups than electronic commerce security; not only that, but the market is moving slowly towards hardware solutions, which price out seed-stage first-attempt entrepreneurs. I totally believe there's an angle for startups vs. sucky online banking (customer service, flexibility, etc), but I don't think security is it.

olefoo 17y ago
You're right about the capital intensive nature of this market; and about how competitive it is. But it's also a very broad market and there are many niches that are not well served. The linked article points out that organizations and people whose liquid assets are in the range of $100,000 to $5,000,000 are particularly vulnerable if they don't keep on top of their network security; but most businesses in that range don't have full-time staff in that specialty and don't know enough to effectively deploy packaged solutions. The larger problem is that innovation in the banking sector is really hampered on multiple levels. It's highly regulated, consumers are relatively conservative; and on some level any offering in that market is asking customers to place their trust in entities they cannot possibly verify to handle their money responsibly. Note: did anybody catch the sidebar that referred to the "secure Ubuntu brower loaded from a USB Stick"?
- tptacek 17y ago
  Again, the major banks are addressing this problem directly across all their customers. Some of them are doing it with hardware fobs, and some of them are doing it with "true-r" software multifactor auth. It's a top-of-mind problem in banking. It doesn't matter what segment of the banking customer base you're serving: you are up against extreme competition for banking security. I'm not saying there's no opportunity with small business banking. I'm sure the banks themselves are painful enough to deal with that a Wesabe-a-like has a good shot at capturing the market. (NB: banking security kind of in our wheelhouse at Matasano).

ars 17y ago

"We're not entirely sure who ended up with the funds." How is that possible? Can't electronic money be fully traced?

olefoo 17y ago
Across multiple transactions, through multiple jurisdictions, in cases where not all of the entities involved are acting in good faith? Not easily.
tptacek 17y ago
No.