10 ms·
I doubt it's even regulation, just inertia. There used to be (still is?) an API called HBCI, but to my knowlegdge that required a smartcard (maybe not to bad a
by captainmuon 10y ago
I doubt it's even regulation, just inertia.
There used to be (still is?) an API called HBCI, but to my knowlegdge that required a smartcard (maybe not to bad an idea) and was mostly read-only. I think in the early 2000s you could use things like Quicken and MS Money to do homebanking (is this why some people in Germany still have the impression that it is dangerous and complicated?)
I think what "Sofortüberweisung.com" initially did was just to scrape the websites of all major banks, and use the HTML as an API. Then the banks found out they could not do much against it legally (and also fearing backlash because they had no good website-payment solution themselves), and they made some agreements.
- mweibel 10y agoIt still is though it's recently called FinTS. Most german banks implement it and it's read/write usually. Every bank has some specialities (even sometimes some bank branches have specialities) so it's usually not _that_ easy to implement if you want support for all banks.
- wdick 10y ago"All" banks in Germany are run by less than 10 data centers. The second biggest, Fiducia, operates about 600 banks. This is one API for 600 banks. For the API - almost all business accounts support HBCI or EBICS. For example my tax accountant and tax software have full access to my business account.