7 ms·

The knowledge which the author has been sharing has been my interest for a long time. I gave up because lack of material on it. Any idea how did OP gain all the

The knowledge which the author has been sharing has been my interest for a long time. I gave up because lack of material on it. Any idea how did OP gain all these knowledge? For example, I want to implement a QR payment application, think like transferring money through Venmo using QR code, now Paypal does it, very popular in China -- basically a payment processing application but my local country - think Mexico or Peru. How does one understand all the requirements to make it work? It makes me wonder how did Stripe founder obtains this crucial knowledge to build what they have. Payment processor or integrating with banks. Same thing what Plaid is doing. If I wanted to create an API to interact with a bank for my local city here in the U.S., do I call up a bank teller and ask me to connect me to someone who is interested in integrating their bank with the world? I am certain doing a CFA or master degree in finance will get you no where if your goal is build what Plaid and Stripe have done. Instead, you need to know big shot and have ties with them to achieve success. It kind of make sense this to be true otherwise an developer in India or Ukraine can build APIs ...

symlinkk 5y ago
You have to know people.
Scoundreller 5y ago
> If I wanted to create an API to interact with a bank for my local city here in the U.S., do I call up a bank teller and ask me to connect me to someone who is interested in integrating their bank with the world? I always wondered this, but when some minor crime seems to get heavily investigated by police. Seems like there are avenues to report something and have it taken seriously that just doesn’t exist for the general public calling the general number.
somethoughts 5y ago
I think they were trying to get payments going for a startup idea and were trying to get payments integrated. Or at least that's the founding story. "In early 2010 John and Patrick began working on Stripe together. At the time Patrick was working on several side projects and they debated why it was so difficult to accept payments on the web. They sought to solve the problem and see if it was possible to make it simple - really simple. The next 6-months they played with it, showed it to friends, and saw how people interacted with it, iterating along the way." [1] https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/the-collison-brothers-and-story-behind-the-founding-of-stripe/ https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/the-collison-brothers-and-...
graeme 5y ago
Apart from talking to people, I think he read a lot of bank annual reports and spent time on forums dedicated to helping people get redress from banks.
xtracto 5y ago
What Plaid (and similar others) are doing to "connect" and interact with a bank was basic bank login flow scraping (maybe not scraping itself, but you can check the HTTPS network traffic). I know Paybook [1] is doing it in Mexico [1] https://www.paybook.com/w/en/paybook/site/home https://www.paybook.com/w/en/paybook/site/home
- zeusk 5y ago
  It seems like they're better integrating now, recently Bank of America started listing connected institutions via Plaid with an option to disconnect them.
  - thefunnyman 5y ago
    This depends highly on the bank. From what I’ve read, an overwhelming majority of banks don’t offer any kind of API for transaction data so Plaid is just storing your password, impersonating you, and web scraping your transaction data. This is almost certainly a violation of your banks TOS and I wouldn’t expect any help from them in the event your credentials are leaked and your accounts liquidated. https://support-my.plaid.com/hc/en-us/articles/4410324401047-Does-Plaid-have-access-to-my-credentials- https://support-my.plaid.com/hc/en-us/articles/4410324401047...
    - xtracto 5y ago
      Right, I know that there are just a handful of banks that are porviding conncetion flows. I had experience with Capital One I think, their connection flow was horrible and broke the UI of your app: Basically your user had to go into a Capital One webpage (which was pretty ugly, specially in mobile) and then there were several checkboxes that they had to click through to allow specific accounts to be "seen" by the Plaid like services. Then they took you back to your application and if the user selected not to share any account, your application would basically crash. I cannot imagine the UI hell that Plaid will be when every bank implements their own propriertary flow for approving account visilibility.
bostonvaulter2 5y ago
I'm sure that working at Strip has been helpful for his credit card knowledge.

symlinkk 5y ago

You have to know people.

Scoundreller 5y ago

> If I wanted to create an API to interact with a bank for my local city here in the U.S., do I call up a bank teller and ask me to connect me to someone who is interested in integrating their bank with the world? I always wondered this, but when some minor crime seems to get heavily investigated by police. Seems like there are avenues to report something and have it taken seriously that just doesn’t exist for the general public calling the general number.

somethoughts 5y ago

I think they were trying to get payments going for a startup idea and were trying to get payments integrated. Or at least that's the founding story. "In early 2010 John and Patrick began working on Stripe together. At the time Patrick was working on several side projects and they debated why it was so difficult to accept payments on the web. They sought to solve the problem and see if it was possible to make it simple - really simple. The next 6-months they played with it, showed it to friends, and saw how people interacted with it, iterating along the way." [1] https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/the-collison-brothers-and-story-behind-the-founding-of-stripe/ https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/the-collison-brothers-and-...

graeme 5y ago

Apart from talking to people, I think he read a lot of bank annual reports and spent time on forums dedicated to helping people get redress from banks.

xtracto 5y ago

What Plaid (and similar others) are doing to "connect" and interact with a bank was basic bank login flow scraping (maybe not scraping itself, but you can check the HTTPS network traffic). I know Paybook [1] is doing it in Mexico [1] https://www.paybook.com/w/en/paybook/site/home https://www.paybook.com/w/en/paybook/site/home

zeusk 5y ago
It seems like they're better integrating now, recently Bank of America started listing connected institutions via Plaid with an option to disconnect them.
- thefunnyman 5y ago
  This depends highly on the bank. From what I’ve read, an overwhelming majority of banks don’t offer any kind of API for transaction data so Plaid is just storing your password, impersonating you, and web scraping your transaction data. This is almost certainly a violation of your banks TOS and I wouldn’t expect any help from them in the event your credentials are leaked and your accounts liquidated. https://support-my.plaid.com/hc/en-us/articles/4410324401047-Does-Plaid-have-access-to-my-credentials- https://support-my.plaid.com/hc/en-us/articles/4410324401047...
  - xtracto 5y ago
    Right, I know that there are just a handful of banks that are porviding conncetion flows. I had experience with Capital One I think, their connection flow was horrible and broke the UI of your app: Basically your user had to go into a Capital One webpage (which was pretty ugly, specially in mobile) and then there were several checkboxes that they had to click through to allow specific accounts to be "seen" by the Plaid like services. Then they took you back to your application and if the user selected not to share any account, your application would basically crash. I cannot imagine the UI hell that Plaid will be when every bank implements their own propriertary flow for approving account visilibility.

bostonvaulter2 5y ago

I'm sure that working at Strip has been helpful for his credit card knowledge.