9 ms·

Nordigen: Free banking data and premium insights

53 points by rmesters 6y ago

alexchamberlain 6y ago
How does this compare to others, such as Truelayer?
- rmesters 6y ago
  CEO/co-founder of Nordigen here. We plug in to the same Open APIs as Truelayer, but we don't charge for access to banking data. We only charge for value-adding data services (e.g. Transaction Categorisation, Credit Insights) that help developers get more value from banking data.
  - sails 6y ago
    Truelayer cost structure is quite low, order of £400 per month if I recall correctly, which I often thought was relatively cheap. I wonder if the value proposition of free vs £400 is compelling enough. How does Truelayer cost scale up? A minor thought on how you could improve on the service Truelayer offers: It requires some dev work to setup the auth callback, requires hosting a server etc. This is perhaps because the product is more enterprise than hacker, but this is more work than say Codat that is providing the same service for accounting systems, without the need to host our own auth service.
joe_91 6y ago
Really great to see alternatives to plaid! A few years ago I looked to setup an online finance tracker for personal finance and eventually dropped the idea of connecting with Banks using Plaid or Salt due to the excessive costs - especially for just a side project idea. Hopefully banks the world over will start to standardise their API's and we'll have access to more and more third party apps which can help people with their finances!
- joe_91 6y ago
  Oh just an FYI - I'm getting a 403 error when trying to subscribe to your mailing list, it looks like a CSRF error: "CSRF verification failed. Request aborted."
- rmesters 6y ago
  UK and Europe has already done this. Australia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Japan are all working towards this. It's happening.
- capableweb 6y ago
  > Hopefully banks the world over will start to standardise their API's and we'll have access to more and more third party apps which can help people with their finances! I got good news for you, Europe has already been working on a solution for this for a long time, finally coming to fruition now. Nordigen seems to be using PSD2 as well. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Services_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Services_Directive
  - dastx 6y ago
    Except in reality there is no standardisation, and everyone's API is different. Making it that much harder to actually integrate. Still, having _an_ API is way better than no API.
- omeze 6y ago
  FYI - Plaid is free for 100 linked accounts (and has been since inception) so it should work for personal use cases. Disclaimer: used to work there
capableweb 6y ago
Looks cool and all, would like to be able to use. Bit bothered that it's a Show HN since you can't actually try it out, this is just asking you to sign up to a mailing list or contact sales basically. This is funny because you have two buttons as the call to action, "Get Free Access" and "Contact Sales". Both of them leads you to having to wait for them to contact you back. Having a list of supported banks upfront would be nice as well.
- rmesters 6y ago
  Thanks - super valuable feedback. A fully self-service onboarding is on the way. I get the frustration of having to wait, we're working on that.
  - ganzuul 6y ago
    Consider when you try to build momentum. I for one won't be checking back until you make the news again.
  - mellosouls 6y ago
    I think you haven't understood - it's a requirement of ShowHN that the service is readily useable for free try-outs. Sign up pages are not eligible. https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html Regardless, best wishes with the project, sincerely.
    - dang 6y ago
      I've taken Show HN out of the title now. Thanks.
klausjensen 6y ago
How can I see a list of banks I can actually connect to in each country? Ps. This looks great, and I will try it out, if my bank in Denmark supports it/is supported. :)
- rmesters 6y ago
  There's a good chance we support your bank in Denmark. We support a good bunch of banks in DK already.
  - alexchamberlain 6y ago
    That doesn't actually answer the question: where is the list of supported banks published?
neogodless 6y ago
Minor complaint - went to mouse up to click on pricing and I suppose my cursor went out of the viewing window, and I got an annoying "wait don't leave" pop-up. I'm sure this is intentional and perhaps it's better for your business to have it, but I personally find it a good reason to close the tab. Perhaps add a tiny waiting period when the mouse leaves in case it is accidental and not aimed at hitting the "x"?
croes 6y ago
FYI: LinkedIn or Github account needed
1f60c 6y ago
In Europe, this isn’t needed because of PSD2.
- rmesters 6y ago
  Fair point. But Europe is also a bit of a mess - 6,000 banks with unique banking APIs. And the large open banking incumbents are charging for access to banking data that's available via PSD2 for free. We're trying to make it a little less messy, by providing free access to data that's actually free (it's weird how it's a thing, I know).
stevesimmons 6y ago
I guess this is really a question to @rmesters, who indicated in a reply that he is CEO of Nordigen. Can you explain what has changed versus the standard product Nordigen had in the market around 2 years ago? I remember having sales calls with Nordigen in October 2019.
- rmesters 6y ago
  Today Nordigen offers Free access to banking data and Premium data insights as a service. For reference: https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/01/nordigen-introduces-free-european-open-banking-api/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/01/nordigen-introduces-free-e... In 2019, we only offered Premium banking data insights as a service (no account aggregation functionality).
dastx 6y ago
Your privacy policy seem quite vague. Do you sell transactional data? Anonymised or not? I've been looking for an alternative to Yodlee, but they all seem to be selling the scraped data in the background.
- rmesters 6y ago
  We’re regulated by GDPR (Europe's data privacy law), which is super strict about data.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    Sure, but nothing in GDPR forbids you to sell data, as long as you're up front about it and ask for permission. Not answering "Do you sell transactional data? Anonymised or not?" with a clear yes or no is a bit worrying.
  - dastx 6y ago
    Since you're Europe based, this was implied. As mentioned by a sibling comment, this doesn't mean you don't sell data. Your vague reply seems to imply that you do end up selling this data. I guess this kind of makes sense, considering selling the data probably makes you a lot more money than the €0.50 per month.
    - rmesters 6y ago
      We don’t sell the data. Our business model is to help developers/businesses access banking data (with end-user consent) and make sense of the banking data to power their apps.
devops000 6y ago
I think the color palette of your website it not looks great.I would have use softer color (eg. Stripe, ModernTreasury etc.)
nailer 6y ago
FYI https://teller.io https://teller.io has been operating in Europe for over six years now giving third parties access to the private banking APIs (not the cut down PSD2 equivalents), long before they opened in the US.
- capableweb 6y ago
  If they have been operating for six years, they really went all the way out on minimalism. Their website barely have any information about how it works and what are the requirements. List of supported countries and banks is also absent. Is https://teller.io/ https://teller.io/ maybe not the main page?
- sails 6y ago
  First time coming across them after following Plaid/Truelayer/Nordigen for a while. Thanks!
- stevesimmons 6y ago
  Why are you pitching for teller? Over 6 years means founded in 2015, right? The legal notices page on teller.io (I read all the way through) does not mention anything about Europe or even GDPR. Pitchbook indicates Teller.io was founded in 2018, with a $4m seed round in January 2020: https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/267839-56#overview https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/267839-56#overview The UK company with the same address as that given by Pitchbook says Teller Inc (UK) Limited was registered in January 2019.
  - nailer 6y ago
    Because using the banks own API is provably less brittle better than scraping (as proven in Teller vs Plaid integration uptimes) and OpenBanking APIs are absolutely limited compared to the bank's native APIs - you can confirm both of these for yourself. Thanks for the conspiracy theory, but I don't own any Teller stock - I've known of Teller since 2015, mainly through Elixir (Teller is one of the first big Elixir-based startups) and the London startup community.
vhanda 6y ago
I would love to use this for my personal bank accounts so that I can setup custom scripts / alerts, but I'm uncomfortable not paying for this. At that point I feel like the product, and even after reading your entire privacy policy, I'm still on the fence. Especially with this part - "Nordigen may also provide personal data to companies that process personal data on behalf of Nordigen such as marketing service providers. Nordigen will be responsible for the correct processing of Your personal data."
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Switch to a bank that provides you API access directly? In the UK all the modern "challenger banks" provide it.
cromka 6y ago
One of the maintainers of KMyMoney, an open-source personal finance software. We looked into (https://invent.kde.org/office/kmymoney/-/issues/21 https://invent.kde.org/office/kmymoney/-/issues/21) leveraging one of the 3rd party aggregators like yours to allow users access their data. The conclusion was that being an open-source software was a no-no for all of them, unless we were willing to sign our binaries with certificates (that the aggregators require) and distribute the software as such. All of that obviously aside from the cost of the service itself. Do you see if this could be made possible with Nordigen?
- dastx 6y ago
  Firefly III [0] solves this by making the user responsible for this. They expect you give it the necessary details (api keys etc) for Spectre, which it then uses to download transactions. Could you not do something similar? Write a small guide for users on where to register and what to do, and give them config options to put in the necessary API Keys, and then use that to download the transactional data? [0] https://docs.firefly-iii.org/firefly-iii/importing-data/introduction/#spectre-salt-edge-importer https://docs.firefly-iii.org/firefly-iii/importing-data/intr...
  - cromka 6y ago
    We discussed this, but I decided it was not worth the effort for something that relies on temporary Dev accounts that are limited in functionality (no PSD2 endpoints work) and that require you lying about the purpose of such account. I don't find that ethical at all. And, again, no PSD2 endpoints.

53 points by rmesters 6y ago

alexchamberlain 6y ago

How does this compare to others, such as Truelayer?

rmesters 6y ago
CEO/co-founder of Nordigen here. We plug in to the same Open APIs as Truelayer, but we don't charge for access to banking data. We only charge for value-adding data services (e.g. Transaction Categorisation, Credit Insights) that help developers get more value from banking data.
- sails 6y ago
  Truelayer cost structure is quite low, order of £400 per month if I recall correctly, which I often thought was relatively cheap. I wonder if the value proposition of free vs £400 is compelling enough. How does Truelayer cost scale up? A minor thought on how you could improve on the service Truelayer offers: It requires some dev work to setup the auth callback, requires hosting a server etc. This is perhaps because the product is more enterprise than hacker, but this is more work than say Codat that is providing the same service for accounting systems, without the need to host our own auth service.

joe_91 6y ago

Really great to see alternatives to plaid! A few years ago I looked to setup an online finance tracker for personal finance and eventually dropped the idea of connecting with Banks using Plaid or Salt due to the excessive costs - especially for just a side project idea. Hopefully banks the world over will start to standardise their API's and we'll have access to more and more third party apps which can help people with their finances!

joe_91 6y ago
Oh just an FYI - I'm getting a 403 error when trying to subscribe to your mailing list, it looks like a CSRF error: "CSRF verification failed. Request aborted."
rmesters 6y ago
UK and Europe has already done this. Australia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Japan are all working towards this. It's happening.
capableweb 6y ago
> Hopefully banks the world over will start to standardise their API's and we'll have access to more and more third party apps which can help people with their finances! I got good news for you, Europe has already been working on a solution for this for a long time, finally coming to fruition now. Nordigen seems to be using PSD2 as well. More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Services_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Services_Directive
- dastx 6y ago
  Except in reality there is no standardisation, and everyone's API is different. Making it that much harder to actually integrate. Still, having _an_ API is way better than no API.
omeze 6y ago
FYI - Plaid is free for 100 linked accounts (and has been since inception) so it should work for personal use cases. Disclaimer: used to work there

capableweb 6y ago

Looks cool and all, would like to be able to use. Bit bothered that it's a Show HN since you can't actually try it out, this is just asking you to sign up to a mailing list or contact sales basically. This is funny because you have two buttons as the call to action, "Get Free Access" and "Contact Sales". Both of them leads you to having to wait for them to contact you back. Having a list of supported banks upfront would be nice as well.

rmesters 6y ago
Thanks - super valuable feedback. A fully self-service onboarding is on the way. I get the frustration of having to wait, we're working on that.
- ganzuul 6y ago
  Consider when you try to build momentum. I for one won't be checking back until you make the news again.
- mellosouls 6y ago
  I think you haven't understood - it's a requirement of ShowHN that the service is readily useable for free try-outs. Sign up pages are not eligible. https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html Regardless, best wishes with the project, sincerely.
  - dang 6y ago
    I've taken Show HN out of the title now. Thanks.

klausjensen 6y ago

How can I see a list of banks I can actually connect to in each country? Ps. This looks great, and I will try it out, if my bank in Denmark supports it/is supported. :)

rmesters 6y ago
There's a good chance we support your bank in Denmark. We support a good bunch of banks in DK already.
- alexchamberlain 6y ago
  That doesn't actually answer the question: where is the list of supported banks published?

neogodless 6y ago

Minor complaint - went to mouse up to click on pricing and I suppose my cursor went out of the viewing window, and I got an annoying "wait don't leave" pop-up. I'm sure this is intentional and perhaps it's better for your business to have it, but I personally find it a good reason to close the tab. Perhaps add a tiny waiting period when the mouse leaves in case it is accidental and not aimed at hitting the "x"?

croes 6y ago

FYI: LinkedIn or Github account needed

1f60c 6y ago

In Europe, this isn’t needed because of PSD2.

rmesters 6y ago
Fair point. But Europe is also a bit of a mess - 6,000 banks with unique banking APIs. And the large open banking incumbents are charging for access to banking data that's available via PSD2 for free. We're trying to make it a little less messy, by providing free access to data that's actually free (it's weird how it's a thing, I know).

stevesimmons 6y ago

I guess this is really a question to @rmesters, who indicated in a reply that he is CEO of Nordigen. Can you explain what has changed versus the standard product Nordigen had in the market around 2 years ago? I remember having sales calls with Nordigen in October 2019.

rmesters 6y ago
Today Nordigen offers Free access to banking data and Premium data insights as a service. For reference: https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/01/nordigen-introduces-free-european-open-banking-api/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/01/nordigen-introduces-free-e... In 2019, we only offered Premium banking data insights as a service (no account aggregation functionality).

dastx 6y ago

Your privacy policy seem quite vague. Do you sell transactional data? Anonymised or not? I've been looking for an alternative to Yodlee, but they all seem to be selling the scraped data in the background.

rmesters 6y ago
We’re regulated by GDPR (Europe's data privacy law), which is super strict about data.
- capableweb 6y ago
  Sure, but nothing in GDPR forbids you to sell data, as long as you're up front about it and ask for permission. Not answering "Do you sell transactional data? Anonymised or not?" with a clear yes or no is a bit worrying.
- dastx 6y ago
  Since you're Europe based, this was implied. As mentioned by a sibling comment, this doesn't mean you don't sell data. Your vague reply seems to imply that you do end up selling this data. I guess this kind of makes sense, considering selling the data probably makes you a lot more money than the €0.50 per month.
  - rmesters 6y ago
    We don’t sell the data. Our business model is to help developers/businesses access banking data (with end-user consent) and make sense of the banking data to power their apps.

devops000 6y ago

I think the color palette of your website it not looks great.I would have use softer color (eg. Stripe, ModernTreasury etc.)

nailer 6y ago

FYI https://teller.io https://teller.io has been operating in Europe for over six years now giving third parties access to the private banking APIs (not the cut down PSD2 equivalents), long before they opened in the US.

capableweb 6y ago
If they have been operating for six years, they really went all the way out on minimalism. Their website barely have any information about how it works and what are the requirements. List of supported countries and banks is also absent. Is https://teller.io/ https://teller.io/ maybe not the main page?
sails 6y ago
First time coming across them after following Plaid/Truelayer/Nordigen for a while. Thanks!
stevesimmons 6y ago
Why are you pitching for teller? Over 6 years means founded in 2015, right? The legal notices page on teller.io (I read all the way through) does not mention anything about Europe or even GDPR. Pitchbook indicates Teller.io was founded in 2018, with a $4m seed round in January 2020: https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/267839-56#overview https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/267839-56#overview The UK company with the same address as that given by Pitchbook says Teller Inc (UK) Limited was registered in January 2019.
- nailer 6y ago
  Because using the banks own API is provably less brittle better than scraping (as proven in Teller vs Plaid integration uptimes) and OpenBanking APIs are absolutely limited compared to the bank's native APIs - you can confirm both of these for yourself. Thanks for the conspiracy theory, but I don't own any Teller stock - I've known of Teller since 2015, mainly through Elixir (Teller is one of the first big Elixir-based startups) and the London startup community.

vhanda 6y ago

I would love to use this for my personal bank accounts so that I can setup custom scripts / alerts, but I'm uncomfortable not paying for this. At that point I feel like the product, and even after reading your entire privacy policy, I'm still on the fence. Especially with this part - "Nordigen may also provide personal data to companies that process personal data on behalf of Nordigen such as marketing service providers. Nordigen will be responsible for the correct processing of Your personal data."

Nextgrid 6y ago
Switch to a bank that provides you API access directly? In the UK all the modern "challenger banks" provide it.

cromka 6y ago

One of the maintainers of KMyMoney, an open-source personal finance software. We looked into (https://invent.kde.org/office/kmymoney/-/issues/21 https://invent.kde.org/office/kmymoney/-/issues/21) leveraging one of the 3rd party aggregators like yours to allow users access their data. The conclusion was that being an open-source software was a no-no for all of them, unless we were willing to sign our binaries with certificates (that the aggregators require) and distribute the software as such. All of that obviously aside from the cost of the service itself. Do you see if this could be made possible with Nordigen?

dastx 6y ago
Firefly III [0] solves this by making the user responsible for this. They expect you give it the necessary details (api keys etc) for Spectre, which it then uses to download transactions. Could you not do something similar? Write a small guide for users on where to register and what to do, and give them config options to put in the necessary API Keys, and then use that to download the transactional data? [0] https://docs.firefly-iii.org/firefly-iii/importing-data/introduction/#spectre-salt-edge-importer https://docs.firefly-iii.org/firefly-iii/importing-data/intr...
- cromka 6y ago
  We discussed this, but I decided it was not worth the effort for something that relies on temporary Dev accounts that are limited in functionality (no PSD2 endpoints work) and that require you lying about the purpose of such account. I don't find that ethical at all. And, again, no PSD2 endpoints.