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Cool stuff, most banks, brokers and hedge funds have no FOSS culture. That said, the major blockers for financial services, at least in my country, are sort of
by pid-1 5y ago
Cool stuff, most banks, brokers and hedge funds have no FOSS culture.
That said, the major blockers for financial services, at least in my country, are sort of unrelated to open source software being available.
Thinking about the most basic questions one needs to answer to start a fintech:
1. I want to create a bank. How do I do that?
2. I want to issue credit cards / lend money / make a payment system. How do I do that?
3. I want to start an investment fund. How do I do that?
Those are just some examples, but each one of those questions lead to infinite rabbit holes of laws, regulations, bizarre costs and arcane systems to integrate to.
I have more experience with (3) and stuff like getting reliable market data, connecting to brokers and exchanges, sticking with compliance rules, etc... are easily the most painful and costly bits of my job.
- bloudermilk 5y agoWhat would you suggest as a good starting point for a founder looking at (3)?
- carnitine 5y agoSpeak to a lawyer who specialises in it. Everyone who starts a fund pays a lawyer to do all of the paperwork, in many cases it’s pretty boilerplate.
- molsongolden 5y agoIn the USA, there are XaaS solutions for most of these now. It's possible to start a bank, issue cards, facilitate payments, etc. all on pre-built infra + APIs and your job becomes building the user experience and customer/vertical-specific tools on top.
- blitzar 5y ago#1 & #2 dont touch with a barge pole. #3 get a copy of excel.
- fijiaarone 5y agoThese are the three biggest questions that keep the financial services sector (at least those who think about technology and innovation) up at night. 1. How can I prevent someone else from creating a bank. 2. How can I prevent someone else from being able to issue credit cards / lend money / make a payment system. 3. How can I prevent people from being able to make investment funds.
- stadium 5y agoFor 1 & 2, most companies are going to partner with a core banking service provider. Core banking is basically a specialized ERP for banks. The big players are Fiserv, FIS, Finastra and Jack Henry[0] [0] Paywalled, but a relevant link where I pulled those company names from. https://www.americanbanker.com/news/why-more-banks-are-ditching-their-legacy-core-vendors https://www.americanbanker.com/news/why-more-banks-are-ditch...