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Teller – API for your bank account

• Scottymeuk 9y ago
  I built a little script to export my accounts to CSV/QIF. Super easy to use API! https://github.com/scottrobertson/teller-export https://github.com/scottrobertson/teller-export
• billconan 9y ago
  Is this only for UK? which banks are supported?
  • jfraser 9y ago
    The list of supported banks is at the bottom of the post.
  • giobox 9y ago
    It's stated in the post: "Teller is available today for Santander UK, Barclays, Natwest, Nationwide, RBS, Isle of Man Bank, and Ulster Bank."
• Animats 9y ago
  Not seeing terms of service or a privacy policy. Who's responsible when there's an error, or a transaction is processed twice or zero times? Is this really a scheme to obtain user data and sell it to advertisers?
  • sjtgraham 9y ago
    Founder here. First of all, I'm honored the legendary John Nagle now knows about my startup! :) Privacy policy and terms are linked to from https://teller.io/developer/beta https://teller.io/developer/beta Privacy policy: https://teller.io/developer/privacy https://teller.io/developer/privacy Terms: https://teller.io/developer/terms https://teller.io/developer/terms Payments APIs will be signed by the developer's private key (See more about that our auth scheme here https://blog.teller.io/2016/04/26/tauth.html https://blog.teller.io/2016/04/26/tauth.html) and transactional APIs will use idempotency tokens to prevent double processing. This is not a scheme to sell anything to advertisers, it's a scheme to improve the quality of financial services for the highest number of people by providing developers with API access to bank accounts that banks should have provided themselves long ago!
    • Animats 9y ago
      Your terms: "We are not liable for any loss or damage that may result from your use of our services. This includes any direct, indirect, or consequential losses; any loss or damage caused by tort, including negligence, breach of contract or otherwise." You don't get taken seriously in the financial space with terms like that. You need to accept responsibility for errors and carry errors and omissions insurance. Compare Bank of America Bill Pay service terms: When you make a bill payment using Online or Mobile Banking you can be confident that it will be processed correctly. In the unlikely event that we fail to process your payment in accordance to the payee, amount and date you specified, Bank of America will reimburse you for any late-payment-related charges incurred. We are committed to keeping your financial information safe and making sure you can bank with us securely, which is why you are not liable for fraudulent transfers or bill pay transactions made via online or mobile when they are reported promptly.[1] [1] https://www.bankofamerica.com/onlinebanking/online-banking-security-guarantee.go https://www.bankofamerica.com/onlinebanking/online-banking-s...
      • jameskegel 9y ago
        You're not wrong; but please don't ignore OP's excitement to garner your attention, those things matter to little people like us in a socially conscious culture of 2017.
      • posix_compliant 9y ago
        Bank of America's assets total over 2 trillion dollars. I would imagine it's easier for large financial institutions to create such strong guarantees for its users.
        • ksherlock 9y ago
          Marc came to our office at midnight and read the letter I’d written to our community about the Airbnb Guarantee, and the two changes he made changed the company forever. I’d said we guarantee five thousand dollars for property damage, and he added a zero, which seemed crazy.” -- http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/18/tomorrows-advance-man http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/18/tomorrows-advan...
• jsk2600 9y ago
  This is interesting and has great potential to grow when PSD2 goes live in EU (early 2018). I wonder what authors plans are regarding this.
  • sjtgraham 9y ago
    My hypothesis is that PSD2 will not be the golden opportunity everyone hopes. Banks are an oligopoly and unfettered open access to their customers via open APIs is potentially a disaster for them. They have little to gain and everything to lose. When you consider this and then expect incumbent banks to act in their self-interest it follows that they will act to subvert the impact of PSD2, e.g. by fragmentation, lobbying for onerous requirements in order to consume them, etc. All of this is already happening, which is why I think there is an opportunity for Teller by truly aligning with developers and users.
    • llsf 9y ago
      Removing roaming fees for all European telecom operators was also a something that they had little to gain and everything to lose. But, here we are. From my understanding SEPA is getting implemented. I could see PSD2 following the same path. Some banks will drag their feet, but it is a pandora box situation, as the banks that will implement PSD2 first might get all the apps attention and love, potentially driving new customers. Let's see next year how PSD2 adoption pans out... PSD2 explained: https://transferwise.com/gb/blog/what-is-psd2 https://transferwise.com/gb/blog/what-is-psd2
      • jasiek 9y ago
        Current roaming regulations in the EU are designed with the biggest, transnational players in mind. By subsidizing operations in a less lucrative market using proceeds from other countries, they can bleed smaller national telecoms. They will then proceed to buy them for pennies on the dollar. This will result in less competition down the road, and higher prices for the end user.
        • 9y ago
• lookingfj 9y ago
  How does it work if not by screen scraping?
  • amb23 9y ago
    I'd assume they're taking advantage of the Open API laws for financial institutions in Europe. The US is a long ways away from having this.
    • martinald 9y ago
      It uses the internal APIs mobile banks use afiak. For what it's worth the open API laws aren't in power yet in Europe and tbh I imagine nearly all banks will fail to implement by the deadline. Or if they do, the APIs will be fairly crippled.
    • jasiek 9y ago
      So does Europe. Open Banking Ltd in the UK is attempting to develop these standards, but they are working with tens of stakeholders across impossible deadlines - which means they cut scope and quality. And since banks in the UK are sponsoring the show, it is beyond certain that no disruptive moves will be taken, and interests of the incumbents will remain preserved.
  • dabeeeenster 9y ago
    Most UK banks require a 2 factor device so probably not. Maybe there is direct access?
    • giobox 9y ago
      I'm in no position to answer authoritatively, but for what its worth the three accounts I have left in the UK, with different banks, can all be accessed without a 2 factor device.
    • vidarh 9y ago
      Many do, but the key is that the mobile apps generally only require access to 2FA for registration, so if they implement the mobile app interface they can get away with having users use the 2FA device once. This is the case for Barclays, for example, where in fact once the mobile app is registered, that can be used as a Pinsentry (2FA) device replacement.
• alexbilbie 9y ago
  UK banks don't accept any liability if you give your online banking credentials to a third party. If some fraud was to come about as a result of someone using Teller then they would be out of pocket or has Teller got agreements with the compatible banks to overcome this situation (either by Teller reimbursing the customer or the bank)?
  • lewisl9029 9y ago
    I believe this is true for most US banks also. I can't even count how many promising-looking Fintech products I had to pass over because the only auth mechanism they offered was through sharing online banking credentials. Until bank policies regarding credentials-sharing actually change, I think it's really irresponsible for products to even ask for credentials at all, let alone offer it as the default/only auth option. Users could be unwittingly putting their entire life savings at risk.
    • sillysaurus3 9y ago
      Users could be unwittingly putting their entire life savings at risk. Is this a realistic concern? I thought the point of a bank was that situations like that can be reversed 100% of the time.
      • Jemmeh 9y ago
        It's a realistic concern. For example, a lot of elderly people are targeted for scams because they A.) Are often little easier to trick and B.) Tend to have more money. Comes up in the news a lot. They don't get it back.
      • lewisl9029 9y ago
        In this particular case, yes, because banks tend to deny all liability for fraudulent transactions that result from credentials sharing, so the user is entirely liable for whatever loss that occurs.
      • Mtinie 9y ago
        That reversal is not instantaneous, and by no means is it a guarantee that you'll ever get the whole amount back when overdraft fees, third-party bounced check fees, and all of the other non-monetary impacts are taken into account. Depending on the scope of your accounts with the financial company that you're banking with it's possible that beyond your day-to-day operating funds and your mid-term savings accounts that you may also have access to your investments and other long-term stores of value. They aren't as liquid, and it would be harder for a thief to shift them into something that can be transferred out of your account, but it certainly is possible for it to happen if sales of stocks/bonds/etc. are conducted without your knowledge and then the funds are wired out.
• foodstances 9y ago
  How is this different than something like https://plaid.com/ https://plaid.com/ ?
  • JohnnyMneunomic 9y ago
    Or any different from Quovo (https://www.quovo.com/ https://www.quovo.com/) if you were pulling both bank data and brokerage data?
    • drglitch 9y ago
      Teller is for UK, whereas both of these are in US. As GP points out Plaid currently does not have any brokerage data (beyond simple account balances) - only yodlee and Quovo do.
    • rufugee 9y ago
      First I've heard about Plaid and Quovo. These services seem to be targeted at a developer interested in developing products for others. I really wish someone would come out with an API service targeted towards someone who would like to manage and query their portfolio of accounts with code. I have tried time and time again to use things like Mint or Quicken to have a consolidated view of my accounts, but invariably I find things that really suck about the service. I'd rather hack together a set of scripts and do it that way, but where to go for the actual access (aside from manually downloading .obx files).
      • macandcheese 9y ago
        Personal Capital is pretty good - their investment service is pretty overpriced, but their free portfolio management tools work most of the time, provide great graphing, and seem to handle all my accounts easily across a variety of banks.
      • JohnnyMneunomic 9y ago
        Would you pay for access to this API service?
• foxylion 9y ago
  As a German it is hard to believe that such things do not exist yet in other countries. We have a standardized protocol called FinTS which is implemented by most banks. This results in a huge amount of desktop and mobile applications for banking.
  • markbnj 9y ago
    As an American who founded a software company in the online banking sector 20 years ago I can tell you that my experience at that time was that banks here had no interest in making it easier for 3rd parties to get between their customers and their own branded offerings. Microsoft and Intuit tried to promote a standard "API" for banking back then (OFC/OFX) that got very little support from institutions at the time and since. I think basically the only way this would come to pass in the U.S. is through regulatory action, which seems unlikely in the current political environment.
    • dnm 9y ago
      Concur. My credit union recently switched the backend processor for their credit card. Now, the only option for transaction download is csv or xls. Welcome back to the 90s.
    • maxxxxx 9y ago
      I used to use MS Money and it was really great while it worked. Then slowly banks dropped their support and at the moment there is really no easy way to get all your accounts into one database (especially one that you own yourself) other than giving all your password to something like Mint. There definitely seems to be a trend for more and more proprietary protocols instead of standards. And we all know that any kind of regulatory action is anti-freedom and job-killing so I wouldn't expect any regulation to happen.
      • r00fus 9y ago
        Some banks (Cap One 360 formerly ING Direct) allow you to generate a site-specific passphrase, so you would limit your exposure if Mint got hacked. However, the whole concept of something like Mint is really read-only access, and I wish that site-specific passphrase had that as well.
• petraeus 9y ago
  There are many many problems besides the technological hurtles.
• smaili 9y ago
  How many times have you thought to yourself “Damn, I really wish my bank account had an API”? Now that's an intro!
  • bastijn 9y ago
    You think? For me as a Dutch guy my only though was "literally never". We have ideal for payments (https://www.ideal.nl/en/payment-service-providers/ https://www.ideal.nl/en/payment-service-providers/) and every bank has its mobile app that is integrating via ideal. So all payments on my phone the app just pops up, I do a finger scan and done. All apps are very decent for all normal banking business. I can't think of any use case I would need to trust a third party with my credentials.
    • Avalaxy 9y ago
      Ehhh, you totally seem to miss the point. It's not about making a single payment, but automating that without any user interaction in between. Simple example: I want to build a arbitrage trading bot that can automatically request my bank to wire money to some address so I can have my funds on an exchange topped up. That's not gonna be possible without an API.
    • tokenizerrr 9y ago
      Another dutch person here. I can think of plenty of use cases. I'd like to keep track of where my money goes, and have played with programs like GnuCash and Ledger before. The big problem is getting data into them. I have a decent system where I download the CSVs, feed them to a script, and everything gets imported. However this requires me to think about downloading that CSV every month. And my administration lags behind by a month. It's also inconvenient if my system can't automatically identify the receiver, since then I'll have to help it out. Hard to do that when I have to recall where I spent $15 a month ago. If there was an API I could use to get these details, it would be so much more convenient. Could even build a product around it.
    • ghostly_s 9y ago
      For me, an American guy, my thought was the same. Normal people don't think about APIs. I gather the target audience here is service providers, but the copy is confusing because it seems to be speaking directly to consumers?
• AJRF 9y ago
  I cant wait for PSD2.
• bruno2223 9y ago
  Cool project, You should make it open source (to grow your bank catalog by the community) with some premium Plan (to earn money of it) That's the only way to get it worldwide, otherwise, you will have to do MITM attack every single Bank App in order to get their APIs, with is painful and most of the times impossible without valid credentials. Opensource + Premium is the way to go!
  • javiercr 9y ago
    Teller is amazing (kudos to Stevie), but if you're looking for an open source solution you can take a look to: https://github.com/bankscrap/bankscrap https://github.com/bankscrap/bankscrap We already support major banks in Spain and we're looking forward for people who can contribute with adapters to support even more banks worldwide.
• Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
  Superb. Any chance of supporting Lloyds?
  • sjtgraham 9y ago
    Yes, Lloyds HBOS brands are a high priority.
  • mightypirate 9y ago
    Truelayer, a uk competitor, already support Lloyds
• skrebbel 9y ago
  Dutch mobile-only bank Bunq also published their API pretty recently: https://www.bunq.com/en/api https://www.bunq.com/en/api Things are starting to not-entirely-suck in retail banking land. (in Europe, at least - not sure about elsewhere)
  • reledi 9y ago
    Monzo, the UK mobile-only bank, also has an API: https://developers.monzo.com/ https://developers.monzo.com/ Teller is not a bank itself though. I believe it started as a wrapper around banks' private APIs, not sure whether that's still the case.
    • martinald 9y ago
      To be fair, Monzo isn't either. They don't have any of their own infrastructure yet, it's just a third party rebranded prepaid card.
      • lylo 9y ago
        That's not true. They recently received a banking license (https://monzo.com/blog/2017/04/05/banking-licence/ https://monzo.com/blog/2017/04/05/banking-licence/) and they have built their own platform (https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-backend/ https://monzo.com/blog/2016/09/19/building-a-modern-bank-bac...).
        • richardknop 9y ago
          But monzo card is still just prepaid debit card. You don't get a current account. That might change later this year when they roll out current accounts but for now it's just simple prepaid/travel debit card with mobile app. Also not sure they have switched from WireCard yet? Last time I heard they have not switched all of their existing users to their own platform but perhaps they managed the transition already?
  • germanier 9y ago
    Unfortunately the Bunq API requires a fixed IP address which means I can't use it with my non-cloud banking software from my (dynamic IP) home connection.
• heneryville 9y ago
  "We realise that our revenue will most likely be a very long tail with a small number of customers bringing in most of the cash." Either they or I don't understand what long tail means.
  • whitepoplar 9y ago
    Long tail doesn't necessarily mean that the tail makes up most of the distribution. A long tail can make up a majority, or minority, of the total distribution. E.g. 80% of revenue coming from 1,000 customers. 20% of revenue coming from 100,000 customers or 20% of revenue coming from 1,000 customers. 80% revenue coming from 100,000 customers. The latter is more fat-tailed.
  • phaed 9y ago
    Its a weirdly phrased sentence, but what he means is that he will have a long tail of minimal revenue users and also a few users that will make up the bulk of the revenue, and he wants to open it up to the public in order to find these users.
• BigChiefSmokem 9y ago
  A bank account is usually only part of the financial equation. What would really be useful is an API for a service like Mint. I'd even be willing to pay a low fee for someone to make available all the aggregate data from all the financial institutions via API for me.
  • artosispylon 9y ago
    IIRC, Mint works by screen-scraping, which is what Teller.io is trying to avoid
• orliesaurus 9y ago
  Knowing the founder personally and his level of competency writing code gets me very warm down below. If I still lived in the UK, I would build something around Teller trying to give users a feeling close to what Monzo-bank is/does. Some kind of a hybrid zombie child, but beautiful!
• kennedy 9y ago
  When will this be available in the US?
  • orliesaurus 9y ago
    I wouldn't hope for this being useable in the US anytime soon! "Teller is available today for Santander UK, Barclays, Natwest, Nationwide, RBS, Isle of Man Bank, and Ulster Bank."
  • rdslw 9y ago
    Never? You need legally available reverse engineering without dmca-hammer to be applied plus PSD2 directive coming soon forcing banks to open. Those are EU things.
    • kanwisher 9y ago
      yodlee, mint, quicken, come on. I've had bank transaction information for last 20 years
      • rdslw 9y ago
        Mint is readonly. PSD2 and reverse engineered api is not. Also Mint exposes you to the very threat mentioned in top comment, while PSD2 protects you here. So how about No?
• empath75 9y ago
  I'd much prefer that this were just open source so I don't have to share my bank credentials.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• 7ewis 9y ago
  This looks really cool, but I'm nervous about trying it. Can they provide any guarantees?
  • corobo 9y ago
    While we make every effort to ensure our services are available, secure, accurate, complete, and free from defects we provide no guarantees, conditions, or warranties of this, express or implied. We are not liable for any loss or damage that may result from your use of our services. This includes any direct, indirect, or consequential losses; any loss or damage caused by tort, including negligence, breach of contract or otherwise. This applies if the loss or damage was foreseeable, arose in the normal course of things or you advised us that it might happen. This includes but is not limited to loss of your income or revenue; salary, benefits, or other payments; business; profits or contracts; opportunity; anticipated savings; data; goodwill or reputation; intangible and tangible property; wasted management or office time. No, none.
    • 7ewis 9y ago
      That's a shame. Will have to pass on it for now. Good to see a lot of growth in the FinTech industry though, with banks like Monzo popping up and all these smart investment sites like Nutmeg.
• insomniacity 9y ago
  I emailed a bit with sjtgraham on this a while back. It was my understanding back then that even when Teller does more advanced authentication with the bank, eg EMV CAP, that that does still grant them the rights to move money, even though Teller doesn't yet support it. To me that paints a big target on Teller's back - all those juicy downstream credentials. sjtgraham's point was that setting up new payees typically (always?) requires additional authentication. But I can think of a number of scenarios where a hacker might send all my money to all my existing payees just to mess with me/Teller/my bank... causing fees and stress. Obviously it's going down the route that Teller won't need your full credentials, you will grant them access via something like EMV CAP, which I applaud. But I would call on Teller to publicly commit to not integrate more 'advanced' auth methods if they don't include the ability to grant read-only access, if the user wishes!
  • insomniacity 9y ago
    Incidentally, if Teller start to get an appreciable proportion of the UK population (remember, users will be using Teller without realising, through other apps and platforms), they should expect a call from the regulators, who will want to be sure that they can't cause any systemic instability (eg by getting hacked.)
• sigi45 9y ago
  People: Only do it with an extra bankaccount. Without any credit functionality and without your primary money. Everything else would be very naiv.
• apeace 9y ago
  Which countries are supported? Not seeing that info anywhere. I only saw in a comment here that Teller has relationships with "every major UK bank".
  • apeace 9y ago
    Found it: https://teller.io/developer/beta https://teller.io/developer/beta It is UK only.
• eriknstr 9y ago
  There already exists a company called Teller in Europe which is dealing with payment solutions. > Nets is split up in two divisions: Nets, which manages the Danish market, and Teller, which handles all international markets. This means that Nets processes all Dankort transactions, while Teller processes all transactions by international cards. http://www.epay.eu/acquirer-internet/nets-teller.asp http://www.epay.eu/acquirer-internet/nets-teller.asp https://www.nets.eu/en/payments/ https://www.nets.eu/en/payments/ http://netseu.23video.com/secret/12342399/64f0568391b3ebaa58b291826ee05aa4 http://netseu.23video.com/secret/12342399/64f0568391b3ebaa58... https://my.teller.com/login https://my.teller.com/login
• mirekrusin 9y ago
  Somebody told me that 2018 is the deadline for EU banks to provide API access. If that's the case then going through any server side layer managed by somebody is unnecessary and people in general should think twice about every single bank transaction being stored somewhere "there". It gives out a lot of information from your internet provider to your child's creche, holidays habits, income (duh), loan repayments and whether you like on mondays this new sandwich at pret a manger with a coffee for take-away or eat-in - can be inferred as well. So be careful and if you want to have more insight into your finance maybe it's better to digest those apis yourself, libraries should pop out soon if they are not yet available for your bank (in europe anyway).
  • kevincennis 9y ago
    Are they required to adhere to a standardized API? If not, then I think there's still some utility in a service that can normalize that stuff and provide you with a single, consistent interface.
    • DerJacques 9y ago
      My understanding is that the EU PSD2 regulation indeed is supposed to make banks adhere to a standardised API. That being said, I wouldn't expect a super easy to use REST api with documentation powered by readme.io.
      • devhead 9y ago
        one would think the people securing our finances has the technical capability to provide modern apis... one would think
      • hobofan 9y ago
        If you read the legislation (?) you will see that they are actually very vague in how the banks will provide access. I think it is already a great success that they (fingers crossed) will manage to force the banks to provide access to the data in any form and gave them little wiggle room for justifications to get out of it. There are however some inititives for open API standards that might be accepted by a majority of the banks.
• cikey 9y ago
  Am i the only one that would never trust a completely unknown third party with my bank account? I like the idea, but i would never use this as a service on the internet.
  • cbcoutinho 9y ago
    There will be early adopters who take on this new tech and show the rest of us the possibilities. Just because someone reads HN doesn't mean they need to jump on the band wagon
• guelo 9y ago
  This is annoying, I got all excited and then realising this is for a handful of UK banks. Would be great if it were tagged as a UK thing more prominently.
  • niklasrde 9y ago
    I was really not excited, expecting it to be US-exclusive, until I clicked the link and saw it was UK banks. Whoop ;)
    • esamek 9y ago
      I had he exact opposite reaction: expecting it to be US-exclusive and got to the last paragraph where it said they don't support any US banks. Big ole' :-( face.
• donatj 9y ago
  Any plans on support for more American Banks, such as Wells Fargo?
• beaconstudios 9y ago
  cool - what makes your service different from Yodlee?
• lamby 9y ago
  Would love HSBC support :)
  • mightypirate 9y ago
    Truelayer has HSBC UK support
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• jesusshreds 9y ago
  I wish banks would provide separate read only credentials for things like this, or even for things like their own mobile apps. I don't think I would ever give a third party or an app read/write credentials for something like banking.
• kkotak 9y ago
  I'm sorry but your solution is not my problem.
• sgt 9y ago
  Seems similar to https://root.co.za/ https://root.co.za/ - which is focused on South Africa.
• marcgcombi 9y ago
  This has existed via the EDI standard for VISA net for decades. Nothing new here.
• whockey 9y ago
  Hey all - co-founder of Plaid[0]. Congrats to Steve - great to see some innovation across the pond! There were a bunch of questions about Plaid and the difference. The obvious one is that Teller is UK only and supports the top couple banks, Plaid is US only and supports thousands of financial institutions. If you need both UK and US coverage - since we both have pretty developer friendly APIs - it seems like a nice combo! Steve/Teller have also taken a bit of an antagonistic approach and has not worked with the banks - time will see if this proves successful, but we've taken the approach to work directly with the banks (as investors, clients, data-partners etc.). Hope that helps and if you have any other questions/comments feel free to shoot me an email at william [at] plaid.com [0] https://plaid.com https://plaid.com
  • danpalmer 9y ago
    > Teller... supports the top couple banks. > Plaid... supports thousands of financial institutions. While this is technically correct, I feel this is a little disingenuous. In the UK we have a far concentrated banking industry, at least in retail banking, in that the vast majority (I'd guess >99%) of current accounts or similar are held with maybe 6-7 well known high-street banks. We also do not yet have a shared banking API format. In the US, there are a very large number of smaller credit unions, and many banks/credit unions support the same API format (that I believe Mint.com etc use), and have done for a long time. So I feel this is disingenuous because a) there are fewer banks to integrate with in the UK, and b) the game of integrations here is much tougher.
  • Peroni 9y ago
    >Steve/Teller have also taken a bit of an antagonistic approach and has not worked with the banks - time will see if this proves successful Citation needed. Clearly you have a competing product. I'm surprised to see you using HN to throw shade at a competitor without context.
• pjwal 9y ago
  Can someone explain to me this dichotomy I see with the almost thermo-nuclear war when it comes to copyright protection of total drivel, but when it comes to fin-tech there is literally a flourishing industry of screen scraping typing companies and well-publicized plays like Mint and it's just like a big shrug? How are these companies able to mitigate through the banking companies TOU and such?
  • pikachuaintcool 9y ago
    It's always about money. Banks benefit from certain bugs/holes in their software (e.g. shitty UI for viewing transaction history/balance -> more overdrafts -> more fees). With copyright, why create something new when you can just sue somebody?
  • PeterisP 9y ago
    There are two main differences between screen-scraping content and screen-scraping transactions. First is that copyright applies to written content (even short content such as tweets) and does not apply to factual data. Second is that whatever rights may apply to the data, in the fintech scenario the users are scraping their own data. So all kinds of copyright-specific laws, of which there are many, don't really apply in this case - and those are the laws that can easily get used against the service provider, unlike the possible ToS violation where the bank would have to against their own customers to enforce it.
  • djhworld 9y ago
    > How are these companies able to mitigate through the banking companies TOU and such? That's the trick, they just put all the liability on the user for security issues. Most banks say you must never give your credentials to a third party So these startups and fin-tech companies just slap a few clauses in their T&Cs to say it's the users problem, not theirs.
• jamesrom 9y ago
  Is the fact you don't talk at all about security in this blog post or on your home page deliberate?
• wbronchart 9y ago
  I have a UK bank account but no UK phone number, can't sign up.
• film42 9y ago
  Engineer at MX here! We have a similar product for US and Canadian banks called Atrium. More info here: https://atrium.mx.com/home https://atrium.mx.com/home NOTE: I saw a few people mentioning Plaid and Quovo so I thought it would be appropriate to mention our product.
  • kondro 9y ago
    Didn't Morningstar just sell you to a bank though? Is your product still going to be on the open market in 6 months time?
    • film42 9y ago
      MX is not owned by any bank. It's still privately owned startup. We are long term in that we have many 5-7 year contracts with big name banks and add more each quarter. We offer mobile banking solutions, data categorization and budgeting tools to banks, so we Atrium is a product to sell access to the services we built to power our other products. So yes, our product will definitely be on the market for years to come. We do add as many data sources as possible. We can use Morningstar for example to find cusip of holdings data. We're always trying to improve too :).
      • kondro 9y ago
        Sorry, don't know why I always get MoneyDesktop and HelloWallet confused. :( Cool… keep on trucking! :) BTW, I don't suppose you have Australian/NZ support?
• jimmcslim 9y ago
  Does anyone have any insight into a PSD2-style effort in Australia? I notice that National Australia Bank is experimenting with APIs, they have a developer portal [1], with FX rates and branch location APIs currently available. Authentication, customer details and accounts APIs are 'coming soon'. [1] https://developer.nab.com.au/ourapis https://developer.nab.com.au/ourapis
  • lysp 9y ago
    There's also a long running discussion on the commbank forums (since 2013). https://community.commbank.com.au/t5/NetBank/API-access/td-p/5071 https://community.commbank.com.au/t5/NetBank/API-access/td-p... However, the response is not really understood by those answering the question. There was talk of them being required by ligislation to have an api by July 2018, but not sure what the progress of that is. https://www.itnews.com.au/news/australian-banks-told-to-build-apis-to-share-data-by-2018-442562 https://www.itnews.com.au/news/australian-banks-told-to-buil...
• jimmcslim 9y ago
  I wonder how many of the use cases for a retail banking API would be simply satisfied by just allowing customers to request a weekly email with a CSV transaction file attached in a sensible format?
  • StarlaAtNight 9y ago
    Banks should most definitely do this. Or maybe provide a link to a CSV file behind a login-wall (so the details passed over email can't be poached as easily)
• hendry 9y ago
  I think I noticed a similar venture in Indonesia: https://brank.as/ https://brank.as/
• _cairn 9y ago
  Sorry for the newb question but a quick google didn't yield the results I was looking for. What is the attack vector here that "screen scraping" would exploit?
• lngnmn 9y ago
  Yet another man-in-the-middle collecting a fee from each transaction?
• runeks 9y ago
  > Transfer money between accounts, make external payments using Faster Payments, and manage your payees, standing orders, and Direct Debits all through the Teller API. What will the fees be on sending/receiving money? Scraping data from your own bank account seems rather uninteresting to me. I assume sending/transferring is limited to domestic banks. Is this the case?
  • ldn_tech_exec1 9y ago
    Teller allows developers to build applications on top of their users' bank accounts, not just your own. Read more about TAuth and how it works here: https://blog.teller.io/2016/04/26/tauth.html https://blog.teller.io/2016/04/26/tauth.html
• SamyGe 9y ago
  Maybe every Bank should provide its own, well documented API. Third Party is not an option imho. Also this reminds me of that root Bank i saw here in HN some time ago... https://root.co.za/ https://root.co.za/
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• teekert 9y ago
  Bunq already has a native api [0], only if you pay sadly, many other functions are free. I like Bunq but their app devellopment is slow, I still can't share iDeal (is iDeal only Dutch? I wonder...) requests through anything other than email and sms. Everybody is waiting for general sharing on Android/iOS. [0] https://doc.bunq.com/ https://doc.bunq.com/
• IshKebab 9y ago
  Yeah no thanks. I want a banking API but I want a first party API. No way I'm trusting some random guy on the internet with my banking password.
• _pdp_ 9y ago
  Once you have access to someones banking account you can typically make small transfers (up to ~£200) without second-factor authentication. So if your service get's breached attackers will have potentially the means to extract real cash through mules or wreck havoc. Asking for credentials is no go whatever the bank is. There are ways to get some feeds even now but that requires signing some papers. Besides, I don't want to shoot down the service because this is genuinely a useful service (if it wasn't for the scrapping) but the best way to solve this problem is for banks to implement their own APIs with proper access controls that make sense in the context of the bank and the account.
• skirsch 9y ago
  Early on at Token, we looked Teller as a possible solution to getting to market quickly. We found two things: 1) the lawyers told us to stay clear (huge greyzone) and 2) the banks themselves didn't want to engage with us using teller even if it sped up development time. We even brought stevie in talk to our lawyers to make his case. He failed to convince them. Finally, we inquired about the price. Stevie was elusive on pricing. I finally asked, "Look, if we paid you $1M, how many banks could we get?" He said one. So at that point, we were so far apart on all issues, so we pulled out. Token will be doing something similar to teller in terms of "one API for all banks" (aggregating banks' PSD2 interface with Token acting as a PISP/AISP). But we are also providing the PSD2 interface for other banks. We have raised plenty of money to do it right ($18.5M Series A to start with), but our pricing to developers will be ridiculously inexpensive. Also, we need to hire developers very quickly, so if you are interested in helping us do it right (no shared secrets, all end-to-end secure protocols, secure central PII storage (where the decryption keys are only available at endpoints), please let us know. We don't have a lot of time left to do this right. We are located in London and San Francisco.
  • johnlbevan2 9y ago
    Do you know what reasons the lawyers gave for steering clear? i.e. The arguments for your scenario as a potential competitor may not apply to other potential users. Also some lawyers just give "steer clear" as default advise, since that way they themselves are in the clear / there's no benefit to them to tell you to go for it, so the incentive is for them to be overly cautious.
  • sjtgraham 9y ago
    Steve, I'm really surprised. > the lawyers told us to stay clear (huge greyzone) I remember going in to speak with your lawyers, convincing them, you emailing me the same day telling me as much and still wanting to do a deal. > Stevie was elusive on pricing. I finally asked, "Look, if we paid you $1M, how many banks could we get?" He said one. If you then thought I was going to give you, a competitor, my core IP for 1 million dollars a year, while you used it with your series A money to capture the market, well then you must be out of your damn mind. > the banks themselves didn't want to engage with us using teller even if it sped up development time Banks don't want to engage with you period. Nobody has heard of Token, you have zero technology and zero bank integrations. Best of luck with it all, Steve.
• johnlbevan2 9y ago
  Is there a test / mock instance, allowing you to call services connecting to dummy bank accounts? i.e. Some people may be concerned about trying out the API on their own accounts during the early stages, or if any update services are added in future. Also it enables those not banking with a supported bank to develop against the service.
  • sjtgraham 9y ago
    A sandbox is planned.
• sleepyhead 9y ago
  Teller is already an established brand name in the payment industry in Norway (Scandinavia?). https://www.nets.eu/en/payments/ https://www.nets.eu/en/payments/
• megamindbrian 9y ago
  How is this differently than Yodlee?
• benoror 9y ago
  Paybook (https://www.paybook.com/ https://www.paybook.com/) is doing the same in Mexico
• retrac98 9y ago
  Just wanted to say well done. Lots of people here throwing up problems, complaints, reasons why this won't work etc. I think this is great.
• elliott2020 9y ago
  OMG finally! So does this mean we can skip all the credit card and ACH fees?
• adambowles 9y ago
  Why is it gated behind SMS?
• mossid 9y ago
  Is there any plan to support south korea?