5 ms·

Banks are so digital it hurts

10 points by gyre007 10y ago

fennecfoxen 10y ago
Banks! Digital! So digital that our partner integration API is a batch SFTP upload of CSV files, with most success/failure reports coming back over the next few days but several coming back weeks after the fact.
- smhg 10y ago
  Digital! Batch SFTP upload! No mainland European banks I have accounts with offer anything like that. I have to request a PDF export manually and hope it is ready the next day. If I'm lucky it is for free.
- ci5er 10y ago
  Why don't you use EDI? Not that this would resolve the in-house processing, the ACH delays or the UCC-rule induced delays, but are you doing transactions that are not EDI-able?
  - fennecfoxen 10y ago
    Believe so. BACS is a CSV system, SEPA is made out of XML. I'd have to look up exactly what Autogiro needs since I'm not at the office. :b
rtkwe 10y ago
If you want to read here's the archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20160910123651/http://www.adendavies.com/banks-we-are-so-digital-it-hurts/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160910123651/http://www.adenda...
ci5er 10y ago
Well, sure. You've got to record transactions in ledgers, and those have been stored on computers since the 60s/70s. But on the payments side of the house, there's no technical reason any inter-bank account-to-account push-pay transaction couldn't be done in under 5 seconds for under ten cents. But, no! We've got NACHA (but, now, FAST!) (and the Fed with their 2am window) and and and... And, let's face it: why would a main-street bank want to lose out on the MT fees when interest rates are, well, essentially ... nothing. I agree that the banks have some best-in-class reliability and cohort analytics technology (some of them anyway). The core is kind of antiquated, but why muck around with "it's already reliable"? The "core" is slow and inflexible. The cost structure is crippling. The regulatory environment imprisoning. Legacy interop. Risk. The interbank-frameworks. Yes - all digital. And much of it very good work. Yet, (like in medical, but for different reasons), just because all the bank employees can download apps from the iTunes store, does not mean that the core is ... agile.
- jdietrich 10y ago
  Note that the author is British. Standard payments in the UK are made via the Faster Payments Service, which is free and almost instant in most cases. Contactless payment is near-ubiquitous in the UK, as is mobile banking.
  - ci5er 10y ago
    Thanks. I missed that when I read it. The UK also does not have 6.7K banks and various state regs... But, still, I was associated with a BankOne thing about two decades ago - they had been on an M&A spree and then wanted to "merge" about 80 core banking systems. After about $200M "wasted", the answer ended up being sticking a service bus in front of the lot and routing to the right core... And they were all digital too! :-)
cloudjacker 10y ago
Well that was verbose Maybe the four paragraph version was enough

10 points by gyre007 10y ago

Banks! Digital! So digital that our partner integration API is a batch SFTP upload of CSV files, with most success/failure reports coming back over the next few days but several coming back weeks after the fact.

smhg 10y ago
Digital! Batch SFTP upload! No mainland European banks I have accounts with offer anything like that. I have to request a PDF export manually and hope it is ready the next day. If I'm lucky it is for free.
ci5er 10y ago
Why don't you use EDI? Not that this would resolve the in-house processing, the ACH delays or the UCC-rule induced delays, but are you doing transactions that are not EDI-able?
- fennecfoxen 10y ago
  Believe so. BACS is a CSV system, SEPA is made out of XML. I'd have to look up exactly what Autogiro needs since I'm not at the office. :b

rtkwe 10y ago

If you want to read here's the archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20160910123651/http://www.adendavies.com/banks-we-are-so-digital-it-hurts/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160910123651/http://www.adenda...

ci5er 10y ago

Well, sure. You've got to record transactions in ledgers, and those have been stored on computers since the 60s/70s. But on the payments side of the house, there's no technical reason any inter-bank account-to-account push-pay transaction couldn't be done in under 5 seconds for under ten cents. But, no! We've got NACHA (but, now, FAST!) (and the Fed with their 2am window) and and and... And, let's face it: why would a main-street bank want to lose out on the MT fees when interest rates are, well, essentially ... nothing. I agree that the banks have some best-in-class reliability and cohort analytics technology (some of them anyway). The core is kind of antiquated, but why muck around with "it's already reliable"? The "core" is slow and inflexible. The cost structure is crippling. The regulatory environment imprisoning. Legacy interop. Risk. The interbank-frameworks. Yes - all digital. And much of it very good work. Yet, (like in medical, but for different reasons), just because all the bank employees can download apps from the iTunes store, does not mean that the core is ... agile.

jdietrich 10y ago
Note that the author is British. Standard payments in the UK are made via the Faster Payments Service, which is free and almost instant in most cases. Contactless payment is near-ubiquitous in the UK, as is mobile banking.
- ci5er 10y ago
  Thanks. I missed that when I read it. The UK also does not have 6.7K banks and various state regs... But, still, I was associated with a BankOne thing about two decades ago - they had been on an M&A spree and then wanted to "merge" about 80 core banking systems. After about $200M "wasted", the answer ended up being sticking a service bus in front of the lot and routing to the right core... And they were all digital too! :-)

cloudjacker 10y ago

Well that was verbose Maybe the four paragraph version was enough