3 ms·
I worked for a fintech company until 2 years ago. The CTO/CEO wanted to add a feature that lets users enter their bank password and through a service (Yodlee/T
by inglor 8y ago
I worked for a fintech company until 2 years ago.
The CTO/CEO wanted to add a feature that lets users enter their bank password and through a service (Yodlee/TradeIt) lets the company read their stock portfolio and perform actions.
I told them that I don't think people would trust their bank info to some small fintech startup. Boy was I wrong and people with 4M dollar stock trading accounts would enter their credentials all the time for convenience of not having to copy the data over (since brokers didn't have an API with tokens).
Eventually the company grew and it's pretty reputable on its own but I remember this pretty vividly the surprise of people trusting all their money to us.
- lostmyoldone 8y agoWhile sometimes user actually knowingly make those trade-offs, I suspect many think they do a quite different trade-off. It's not really that people trust you that much, it is more that they in the moment you ask don't understand the consequences at all. Unless you very explicitly tell the users about the risks, that they wold have zero recourse if something goes wrong, they will believe it is okay for them, that somehow everything is taken care of. Very similar to the why people fall for con men. Nobody expects someone to have the audacity to lie so grandly, act so confidently, while in truth being completely 'naked'. You tend to assume that the insanity must have a point, that the obvious loopholes must somehow be covered - taken care of - based on nothing but the fact that someone acted with confidence.