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The EU had the right intentions, but made a big mistake in pushing this onto the banks. Which indeed results in each bank now having a "mandatory" shitty expens

The EU had the right intentions, but made a big mistake in pushing this onto the banks. Which indeed results in each bank now having a "mandatory" shitty expenses section. What they should have done instead, is standardize a secure export function of all your expenses, allowing open source, and vendors to provide statistics and utilities based on this format.

koonsolo 6y ago
Especially when you are a customer at multiple banks.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Doubly especially when you're a developer that can handle a proper API themselves, and do a better job at it than all the startups that will pop up to sell you a budget management service, nothankyou. All these years I wanted a widget that would display three numbers and a graph on my phone's home page. A total sum of money on all my non-savings accounts across all banks, the amount I already spent today, and a "burndown graph" for the month showing how much of this month's income I've already spent. I can write that widget myself, and I will do a better job than any of the startups - by virtue of not needing to include tracking, telemetry, not needing to make it a webview rendering React because $multiplatform, etc. But I can't do this, because the API endpoints needed don't exist unless you're a company with a large enough budget to afford it.
  - imnotreallynew 6y ago
    > because the API endpoints needed don't exist unless you're a company with a large enough budget to afford it. I’m pretty sure Plaid’s free tier is more than enough for the use case you suggest.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Took a look, it looks promising. With two caveats. One: Plaid supports institutions in the following countries: Canada ( 'CA' ) France ( 'FR' ) Ireland ( 'IE' ) Netherlands ( 'NL' ) Spain ( 'ES' ) United Kingdom ( 'GB' ) United States ( 'US' ) My country (Poland) is unfortunately not on the list. Two, there's some mention that "Some European institutions use an OAuth authentication flow, ...". I can't find any info on how long the OAuth tokens are valid, but I suspect they'll be short-lived enough to destroy any possibility of having a script placed in cron.

koonsolo 6y ago

Especially when you are a customer at multiple banks.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
Doubly especially when you're a developer that can handle a proper API themselves, and do a better job at it than all the startups that will pop up to sell you a budget management service, nothankyou. All these years I wanted a widget that would display three numbers and a graph on my phone's home page. A total sum of money on all my non-savings accounts across all banks, the amount I already spent today, and a "burndown graph" for the month showing how much of this month's income I've already spent. I can write that widget myself, and I will do a better job than any of the startups - by virtue of not needing to include tracking, telemetry, not needing to make it a webview rendering React because $multiplatform, etc. But I can't do this, because the API endpoints needed don't exist unless you're a company with a large enough budget to afford it.
- imnotreallynew 6y ago
  > because the API endpoints needed don't exist unless you're a company with a large enough budget to afford it. I’m pretty sure Plaid’s free tier is more than enough for the use case you suggest.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Took a look, it looks promising. With two caveats. One: Plaid supports institutions in the following countries: Canada ( 'CA' ) France ( 'FR' ) Ireland ( 'IE' ) Netherlands ( 'NL' ) Spain ( 'ES' ) United Kingdom ( 'GB' ) United States ( 'US' ) My country (Poland) is unfortunately not on the list. Two, there's some mention that "Some European institutions use an OAuth authentication flow, ...". I can't find any info on how long the OAuth tokens are valid, but I suspect they'll be short-lived enough to destroy any possibility of having a script placed in cron.