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Column – a chartered bank for developers
- tristanMatthias 4y agoIm consistently disappointed with the state of banks in the US (Aussie here). This looks amazing. Would it be possible for me to build something for personal use on top of this? Or are you only targeting business at this stage?
- DenseComet 4y agoTacking onto this question, does anyone have recommendations for US banks that have API access and allow personal use? I've come across a couple companies such as Mercury but they're only for business use.
- gtkspert 4y agoI've resorted to writing a service that can initiate transfers and retrieve transactions for a smaller US bank. I really just want a bank account with an API, that would be so, so nice.
- joshstrange 4y agoThat was the promise with Simple (which they promptly abandoned), it's the main reason I signed up with them in the first place. You can get away with something like Plaid if you just want data but for actually making moves you'd need something else.
- bogwog 4y agoI know Chase at least offers an OFX endpoint if you pay a monthly fee (like ~$10/mo). I wrote a tool a while back that would automatically use that to download my transaction data and store it in a local format for personal accounting purposes. It worked well, but I abandoned it out of laziness.
- crate_barre 4y agoJust to add to your point, can one run their own bank with this?
- mstibbard 4y agoDoes anyone know what they used to produce their API documentation?
- cco 4y agoCongrats @whockey and team! Really powerful place to be in the next few years.
- quirkot 4y agoGood luck filling out all the SARs. I shudder to think of the volume
- strzalek 4y agoHey, I’m an ex-Square that is part of founding engineering team at Column. My team will be monitoring this thread and we’ll be happy to answer any questions! Especially those about ACH, I’m sure you have plenty and we know it through-out!
- drogus 4y agoLooks interesting! Do you plan to create an SDK? Or is interfacing with the HTTP API will be the best way to use the app for now?
- crate_barre 4y agoDo you guys issue physical cards or checks?
- strzalek 4y agoWe’re an issuing bank and sponsor card programs on Visa & Mastercard. Our partners can offer both physical and virtual cards to users. Checks are currently in beta but please get in touch if we can help! https://dashboard.column.com/contact https://dashboard.column.com/contact
- thrill 4y ago
- ayksee 4y agoCongratulations! Really excited and happy to see this come to fruition.
- kommstar 4y agoWhere is the integration with the crypto networks? My crypto is programmable and I would love to see my bank have an api as well.
- whockey 4y agoSuper interesting - what would you like to see? Like USD/USDC swappable accounts or something?
- kommstar 4y agoRight now I have an account now where I can deposit USDC and spend via tap to pay/debit card. Basically just a debit card linked crypto account, rewards are $$$ (4%) and adjusting balances is fast and easy. Also programmable so I can replace what is spent without having to manually transfer. This helps tremendously with managing the families access/budgeting of funds. Would also be nice to have an account where legacy payments (ACH) can be made that also has an interface to deposit USDC. Right now I need to ACH deposit to my bank account (from crypto), and then ACH withdraw to pay the bill. Eventually you could just get rid of the ACH part and convince the accounts receivable to accept USDC (and profit?). Bringing both these services under one roof so it is a bit easier to manage would be the holy grail of legacy and future financial products.
- pc86 4y agoWhat is this account through? That sounds interesting.
- kommstar 4y ago
- quickthrower2 4y ago4% - where does that come from? Sounds too good.
- dugmartin 4y agoI created an account just to check it out and the signup and initial setup flow is very well done. Nice work.
- whockey 4y agoHey founder (and OP) here. This has been a labor of love for the past few years and I'm super stoked on what we shipped. Would love any and all feedback, thoughts and questions!
- leetrout 4y agoI have had this dream for YEARS. I wanted to make a community bank and then build the software to run it and start selling to other credit unions / community banks and start getting rid of the jack henry crap everywhere. Big congrats to you!
- egorfine 4y agoFintech dev here. The product looks incredibly good. What I absolutely love the most is the fact the web site immediately addresses people with a human language at the left and plain code at the right. No marketingspeak. Love it. However the title is a bit misleading. It says "a chartered bank for developers" while the correct title would be "a chartered bank for U.S. developers". I feel like in the IT community we see deeper diversity of nations and citizenships compared to the other industries, so much more people from the rest of the world. To make sure I had to dug into the documentation. Indeed, US-specific properties are marked as required in the person creation API call[1]. So Column is a non-starter for anyone outside the `default_country`. It would be nice to mention this somewhere on the site perhaps to set proper expectations. [1] https://column.com/docs/api/#entity/create-person https://column.com/docs/api/#entity/create-person
- ur-whale 4y agoThis looks like it's US only right now, is that correct? What are your plans to offer these services in other countries?
- whockey 4y agoWe plan on rolling out some corresponding banking services this year to help people with multi-currency accounts and international wires - but it would still be under our US charter. No short term plans to go international - there's a lot of ground we need to cover here. We tend to like to go very deep in an area instead of getting to spread thin.
- heassler 4y agoLooks amazing. Would love to have this in the UK.
- creativenolo 4y agoAgree. But I wonder how much innovation a single company can do. The digital innovation in the UK across banking is massive. From what I see, light years ahead of the US.
- igrav55 4y agoCheck out https://griffin.sh/ https://griffin.sh/
- tosh 4y agoWhat does "chartered" mean?
- whockey 4y agoIn the US (and most countries) in order to get access to the central bank (in the US the fed) and do 'banking things' like holding money, moving money, and lending money you have to have a banking charter. We have a national charter (issued by the OCC) but you can also have some other more bespoke charters as well!
- tome 4y agoSo what's a non-chartered bank?
- lachyg 4y agoI believe they're looking to imply here that they own their own charter, rather than renting someone else's, which is how almost all U.S. fintech companies operate (look in the website footer of, say, Unit and you'll see: "Banking services are provided by Unit's partner banks who are Member FDIC.")
- bogwog 4y agoI assume that means Column can offer lower costs, or something?
- phphphphp 4y agoI’m sure costs is part of the equation but I’d imagine the control is far more important. Reselling legacy bank services means you’re limited to what they can do, which is usually not much. Most finance technology is heavily limited by what they can do… because of their partners, and that’s why they’re usually just nicer interfaces to the same old services. Hence banks like Monzo in the UK building their own infrastructure from the ground up too. The less you’re dependent on legacy technology, the more you can do.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoVery interesting. How are you dealing with KYC regulations? Do you provide that, or is it the responsibility of developers calling your API to have already done KYC.
- koboll 4y agoWould be nice to have a side-by-side comparison with the steps to starting and operating a bank to get a full picture of what Column abstracts away and what founders must still DIY. Currently you have to dig deep into the use case docs to determine some of these details.
- whockey 4y agoWe let developers bring their own KYC providers. There are so many great solutions out there I don't think the world needs another one :) In general our approach is to focus on building things that 'only a bank can do' and if there are great existing solutions (ie: fraud, kyc, issuing processors) we let developers bring those solutions. We play nicely with all of them.
- ValentineC 4y agoI had a quick look through your docs, and it would be really great if Column allowed Entities to use identifiers other than SSN: https://column.com/docs/api/#entity/object https://column.com/docs/api/#entity/object
- fensterblick 4y agoQuestions for the founding team, and others: What books or resources did you helpful in understanding the plumbing of the US banking system?
- whockey 4y agoCentral Banking 101 by Joseph Wang is incredible.
- strzalek 4y agoPayments Systems in the U.S. by Carol Coye Benson is a great starter - it's a mandatory onboarding read at a lot of fintechs
- shivaas 4y agohttps://www.fintechbookclub.com/ https://www.fintechbookclub.com/ and https://notafintech.company/ https://notafintech.company/ are two other resources I'd point you at to learn more about US banking and fintech in general.
- mdaniel 4y ago> Create account numbers that point to a single bank account and create specific permissions and limits for each one. I love that; there are so many places that give a 6% discount for using ACH but I don't want to give out my bank account details willy-nilly --- If you have influence over it, I wouldn't recommend having https://status.column.com/uptime https://status.column.com/uptime default to "Sandbox" since I doubt seriously that's what anyone would care about when going to an uptime page, and can also mislead a reader in a hurry if the Sandbox environment is having woes but Production is fine nit: I would guess you meant "sweep" not "sweet" on https://column.com/bank-accounts https://column.com/bank-accounts > We support FBO, sweet, clearing and custom account types — all FDIC insured.
- whockey 4y agoI'm glad you noticed the account numbers as pointers concept - we think its pretty cool. I think there's some rad use cases that people will come up with! Thanks on the typo...deploying now :0
- rundmc 4y agoWe have been looking for a US banking provider that could handle this. Woo hoo. In RoW they are called virtual IBANs. Numerous use cases.
- nickprins 4y agoOne that I recently found out about is reconciliation from https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/a-game-that-intentionally-frustrates-the-player/ https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/a-game-that-intentionally-...
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 4y agoThis is great. I designed a similar system at Simple and it pained me that it never got implemented.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- belfalas 4y agoVery cool! Is this powered by Marqeta under the hood?
- whockey 4y agoNope! We're a bank not an issuing processor (its pretty confusing...), we don't wrap any vendors or 3rd parties. However, they're an excellent issuing processor so a bunch of our customers use them and us together.
- VincentEvans 4y agoCongrats on launching! I just want to vent about something bank-related, and hopefully bait someone to tell me how this solves it. Or something else solves it. Have you ever heard how you could pay off your mortgage a lot quicker by making bi-weekly payments instead of monthly? Or how you can include extra with your payment and instruct your bank to apply it directly to the premium, helping you reduce your interest? TLDR, I think people giving this advice haven’t tried applying it. Well, I wanted to do that - but in practice I found it near impossible to accomplish. First - any form of electronic bill-pay is right out of the window, because any extra payments or amount - the bank will apply as pre-paying your next scheduled payment, which means you are pre-paying not just principal, but the interest as well. Why would anyone want to do that? The bank helpfully told me that “some people maybe are going on vacation and will be away when the bill is due”. Yeah… You can try to submit a paper invoice with special instructions by postal mail. Then it may or may not work. I don’t know if it’s incompetence or outright customer-hostile behavior from the bank, but this method succeeded only some of the time. You have to follow up by phone to find out and even so making any corrections after the fact is difficult and requires multiple call transfers and waiting on hold.
- kemitche 4y agoI am able to add additional premium payments to my payment, or as a separate payment, via my online mortgage payment site. It sounds like the bank/site your loan is under is actively hostile towards such payments. I don't know enough about mortgages to know how to help you solve your side, though.
- lbotos 4y agoThe most sad part is, while I'm not OP, I had a bank that supported bi-weekly payments, my mortgage was sold, and the new bank doesn't. What a kick in the pants!
- arcticbull 4y agoThey're saving you money by not supporting bi-weekly payments :)
- vfprp321 4y agoThis is a cool idea for sure...as a dev I'll definitely take a look at the API docs. That said, are you a tad worried about the future of "fintech apps"? It seems like a lot of the revenue growth in this space was heavily related to ZIRP and/or super low rates in the preceding few years, which made these apps more attractive to consumers. So, is there an existential worry that the success of the apps that will build on top of your bank is too closely tied to potentially unrealistic Fed policy?
- zrail 4y agoThis is awesome! Could you talk more about the monthly minimums? Also can I create personal accounts with this or is it just business accounts?
- _benj 4y agoThis looks super interesting! Is use case only to build products on top of your platform or could it be used for personal finances and, as a developer, add automations and such over the API?
- PStamatiou 4y agoWhoa this is awesome, congrats on launch. I was following along with https://Increase.com https://Increase.com which seems to be in the same realm (former Stripe folks)
- NetOpWibby 4y agoAh, that must be why the site looks like a Stripe spin-off.
- boringg 4y agoBrilliant. Wish you the best of luck!
- phonon 4y agoLooks awesome. Plan to support RTP? FedNow?
- _praf 4y agoStay tuned ;)
- ModernMech 4y agoA little off topic, but I find it amusing phone booths have been reinvented. Also funny they look like refrigerators: https://column.com/company https://column.com/company Cool that a husband wife team is doing this, I wonder what their relationship is like.
- chologrande 4y agoThis looks really cool, but can someone help me understand more about where it fits in the market? Is this for me, as a developer to just make my own bank accounts? Does this allow me to create a bank frontend SaaS and use column as the backend? Can I originate loans with this platform for myself, or maybe to others somehow? tl;dr Who is the customer?
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoCongratulations on the launch! I wonder if this kind of business model, where it looks like there is basically "one really rich guy self-funding" for a couple of years, is going to be more common. That is, just looking at the site, my guess is that building everything from the ground up (core banking stack, acquiring the chartered bank, then all the APIs and tech on top of that) must have taken many years and many, many millions of dollars. And kudos, because the first thing that struck out at me is the documentation looks excellent. Overall, it looks like something where the the team had all the luxury to "do things right from the ground floor", instead of scrambling and making shortcuts before their runway ran out. I just think it would have been very hard to find a VC willing to be patient enough to wait that long with no revenue or customer feedback ("where's your MVP???")
- vasco 4y ago> must have taken many years and many, many millions of dollars I don't have any inside knowledge, and obviously you can burn many millions even with a small team but: "We started building Column in 2019 and launched in 2022." [0] "We’re only six engineers (seven if you count me…but I’m a weekend code pusher)" [1] [0] https://column.com/company/ https://column.com/company/ [1] https://column.com/blog/hiring-at-column/ https://column.com/blog/hiring-at-column/
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoYeah, agreed, it looks like they are very efficient. But I'm very familiar with the Bank as a Service space, and your data points very much prove my point: 1. The reason so many BaaS companies partner with existing banks is because the process of getting a bank charter is incredibly time consuming and expensive. There are tons of costs just in legal/compliance before you've even done anything. I'm not 100% clear if Column bought an existing chartered bank or got a new charter, but either route is millions right off the get go. 2. As you point out, they were at 3 years from founding to launch. That's an eternity in the VC-funded startup world. Most startups have an initial MVP in a ~6 month time frame.
- 4y ago
- RobLach 4y agoThis will be big.
- tehlike 4y agoSeconding this. This looks fascinating.
- blockwriter 4y agoI am not a professional developer, but I have been developing little projects because I realized the importance, both personally and professionally, of keeping up with new technologies. I would be interested in setting up an account with Column, if only to grow familiar with its advantages. I have been working with Stripe to handle my business' e-commerce and in-person payments. I am curious to know if there is an advantage to using Column in conjunction with a service like Stripe. I know Stripe does things like card issuing. What are the reasons, either explicit or esoteric, for using Column's features rather than a service like Stripe where those features overlap?
- adamredwoods 4y agoIf a developer writes a product that others use, I wonder what type of legal fine print we need to include? For example, if I start my own micro-credit card using this service, I may have my own legal t&a, but I wonder if I need to include Column's as well?
- chii 4y agoBut the t&c is between you and column, not your customer. If you comply with columns' t&c, your customers should be none the wiser. I don't expect a SAAS app I pay for to show me the t&c of AWS and expect me to also comply with it.
- durpkingOP 4y agoDo you plan on offering merchant accounts? (mids)?
- wmf 4y agoI wonder how Column managed to launch when others couldn't. Were the others too early?
- chirau 4y agoWhat exactly is this? What does it allow me to do as a developer? Is this similar to the stuff Stripe offers? I've been looking at the site and trying to figure it out, no luck.
- fierro 4y agoits for developers looking to build financial products that need bank accounts, payments, card issuing, lending, etc. Imagine you wanted to build Venmo; this would be pretty easy with Column APIs. Create bank accounts, deposit/withdraw, and send money between accounts programatically. That's probably the simplest example I can think of.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Asafp 4y agoI am one of the Engineers at Unit.co - we are also building a platform that allows developers to embed financial features into their product Congratulations on the launch! the market is huge and competition is welcome :) Column took a very interesting route, while we have Bank Partners that we develop with them, Column is also the bank , curies to know why they decided to take this route.
- bogwog 4y agoThis looks so damn interesting and cool, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept of a "bank for developers". I get payment processors, like Stripe, but this is a level or two below that, right?
- _praf 4y agoEngineer at Column here! Exactly - we provide access to bare metal banking. Think of us as the bottom layer of the financial infrastructure stack.
- systemvoltage 4y agoWhat are some of things you can build using Column? Ideas? Btw, amazing brand name. Column.
- procrastinatus 4y agoHow does this compare with Stripe Treasury (banking as a service)? https://stripe.com/treasury https://stripe.com/treasury
- _praf 4y agoEngineer at Column here! The difference between us and ALL banking as a service companies (Stripe Treasury, Unit, etc) is that we are the actual underlying bank in the transaction. BaaS companies usually wrap one or several banks (like us) to provide their API's.
- u2077 4y agoCould I create a bank account for personal use that has api access? Or is the product only for businesses that issue cards and accounts to others?
- _praf 4y agoYup. You can sign up today for sandbox access, and then contact us once you are ready to go live and move real money. Truth is, we probably aren't great as a personal checking account, and thats not really the intended use case. But you are welcome to try us out and see what you can build!
- simulate-me 4y agoBut what is the practical difference to the API user? This seems like caring that about how the API is implemented, which is usually not a concern for a SaaS consumer.
- etchalon 4y agoWell this is fucking awesome.
- PeopleB4Cars 4y agoThis but as a credit union
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoSilly question - is there any way to offer a card payment from Column, but restrict which outlets / shops can accept the payment? (I have an idea in mind :-)
- toomuchtodo 4y agoWill you support FedNow instant payments when it GAs next year? Alias support for transfers and payments? Also, my favorite part of your site is this part of your Careers page: > I don’t fit into any of these roles. > You get Column and you think you can drive value on day one. We’ll be honest the bar will be pretty high for us to hire outside of these roles - but fuck it, surprise us. Give us a compelling narrative and hustle....and we promise we’ll read the email! Very cool product, excited to see it grow. Def the future of fintech.
- _praf 4y agoEngineer at Column here. We absolutely want to be early adopters of all new Fed technologies and payment rails. That being said, the rollout on these things is...slow. The Fed moves at its own pace, but we will definitely be right there with them.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoThank you for the reply. One more question: is it possible to sign up as an institutional investor to buy loans originated on the platform alongside Column’s buy side? https://column.com/loan-purchase https://column.com/loan-purchase
- manesioz 4y agoThis looks incredible, congrats on the release. Does anyone know if something similar exists in Canada?
- theptip 4y agoThis looks interesting. Their “before” picture is a bit misleading though; it’s a worst-case. You can already get an account with Silicon Valley Bank as a startup and originate ACH directly over NACHA (source: I built this). However, providing an API abstraction over ACH is cool. I would say it’s worth paying a bit more to Stripe to not have to deal with ACH directly, but then you add a payment hop between you and your payees (==delay) so having a bank that offers a nice API without adding a hop would be very useful. Note that “FBO” (for benefit of) bank accounts are actually quite a valuable feature that is expensive to set up as a startup, and let you execute some exotic legal/funds-flow structures. So pretty cool that you can get those.
- ahallock 4y agoCan someone re-create Simple with this? I loved that service.
- _praf 4y agoI'm sure you could :)
- informalo 4y agoCool! Now do it again, but for Europe.
- openthc 4y agoWill you bank businesses related to cannabis but that don't touch cannabis? Also, your 'Verify' email still has a bunch of default template text in it. ""This is preheader text. Some clients will show this text as a preview."" -- Root/Entity & Beneficial Owner form has some ambigious error messages; doesn't show where what is wrong (eg: which of the three addresses was bad?) -- and the message disappears before it can be acted on.
- ianstormtaylor 4y agoWow, this is such an impressive launch/reveal in so many ways... landing pages, documentation, philosophy, sheer scope. Congrats to everyone on the team for the quality of execution!
- igorkraw 4y agoNice job, are you available in europe? If not, do you know any competitor doing something similar/when are you heading here?
- venantius 4y agoWe’re rolling out something similar for the UK with https://griffin.sh https://griffin.sh - aiming to get our bank license this year. Then expanding to the rest of Europe :)
- sp527 4y agoThere’s something about this that smells like “anyone can now operate a bank without a charter or being subjected to regulatory oversight” that’s maximally distressing and I think it’s incumbent upon the founders to clarify their intent. A proliferation of loosely regulated banking entities was the basis for an economic disaster over a century ago in the US when fractional reserve logic had yet to be formalized. I’m sure that Column enforces reserve requirements, but this has the stench of something that could enable some analogous calamity in the financial (and therefore real) world. It was no less esteemed a figure than Galbraith himself who noted that there’s really no such thing as innovation in finance - it’s just people finding ways to run the same kinds of scams over and over again. What’s to stop someone from using this to create a ‘virtual’ depository institution, issue bad loans against deposits that it attracts with the promise of extraordinary interest, monetize the loans for personal enrichment, and then crash and burn when the aggregate default rate of the loan portfolio becomes unsustainable, sticking the FDIC (and therefore taxpayers) with the bill? And that’s just one of many possible fraud scenarios. The answer is either “nothing” or that Column doesn’t really matter as a company because the theoretical customer base is vanishingly small and it doesn’t solve the truly important problems in banking.
- jo6gwb 4y agoOR There is a large prospective customer base and all assets/liabilities of these customers are reflected on Column's balance sheet and subject to the same oversight by the OCC and FDIC as any other community or national bank (of its size).
- ncake 4y agoIf this is a US-only service, it should say so on the website somewhere. I've also had this experience with e.g. Betterment and Wealthfront. The only way to find out they're US-only is halfway through sign up process, not even anywhere in FAQ's.
- taejavu 4y agoThe first line under the main heading starts with "The only nationally chartered bank...". That, combined with the dot com domain, implies pretty heavily that it's a US only thing. At least, it did for me.
- tomatowurst 4y agoI knew that there was zero chance of this being in Canada so that automatically left this being a US only operation. Very cool, I'm curious what sort of apps you could build on this, it seems that while you can get some programmatic access to banking, there's so many state specific regulations and law you have to abide by. Money transfer license alone is quite expensive for each state.
- fastball 4y agoPlus it says FDIC at the top.
- ranguna 4y agoAnd also mentions "federal reserve" half way through the page. But still, a really poor and implicit way of saying US only. I guess people over there are stuck in their own bubble and might think US is the only country in existence.
- usr1106 4y agoSeems to be a not too uncommon problem. US businesses not taking into account that their site can show up in other countries.
- NetOpWibby 4y agoWill this service allow me to replace Stripe?
- totoglazer 4y agoCould you share more on the legal entities that underlie Column? In particular, what’s actually chartered at OCC and a member of FDIC? I can’t find you, but maybe you just have a different name (for now?)
- monkeycantype 4y agoLong ago I was part of a team (but not the first core team) that built a pension and investment system from scratch , because there were no banking APIs available from anyone, we convinced a bank to let’s us connect to them as an ATM
- hsuduebc2 4y agoWord for this is based.
- manesioz 4y agoClearly the team has a lot of experience in fintech but I was wondering what the major regulatory hoops someone would have to jump through to build something like this -- especially if someone wanted to make a similar product in Canada/LatAm/Europe/etc. Any insights?
- Thorentis 4y agoHow long will it take to be acquired by Stripe?
- whockey 4y ago420 years
- wanderingmind 4y agoThis looks fantastic. Any plans to open international transfers? (swift). There is a real need for a good api driven cheap solution to move money across countries which is at the moment filled by 3rd parties that are not stable or scalable.
- red_hare 4y agoGreat landing page but I'm just going to point out that the code sample is curling a WIRE of $40,000 and the top entry in the "Transfers" is a WIRE for $4,000 and its driving me nuts :)
- stavros 4y agoThis looks nice, I've been wanting to make a whitelist-enabled card for ages now. It would ask me if I want to trust the merchant before every charge, so anything unrecognized would just be rejected. I could also set limits by month/day/year per merchant and anything above that wouldn't go through. Maybe this is exactly what I need.
- kxrm 4y agoI like this, definitely will keep an eye on your service. You need a proof reader. https://column.com/card-programs/ https://column.com/card-programs/ Own your economics * You get 100% of interchange, control your unit economics, and build a company for scale. - * Unliked managed programs, we are built for scale and flexibility. + * Unlike managed programs, we are built for scale and flexibility. Developer-first card program - * We are developers at our core. From settelement to clearing you control the process from our dashboard or API. + * We are developers at our core. From settlement to clearing you control the process from our dashboard or API.
- mountainriver 4y agoThis is really really cool. Opens up a whole world of possibilities, great work!
- fay59 4y agoCan I, uh, make a bank account for _myself_ without being a corporate customer?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zhoujianfu 4y agoAre there any costs? Is it all free? And you make money on deposits like any ordinary bank?
- nwatson 4y agoSolid Financial Technologies pretty much does this and has a number of companies as customers. Here's the API for enrolling Persons, Businesses, doing KYC/KYB, creating bank accounts, issuing virtual/physical credit cards, letting customers use credit cards, do ACH / wire transfers, ... accounts in US$ or ETHER or DOGE or other crypto ... everything a startup or established company needs for providing financial experiences to their customers: https://www.solidfi.com/docs/introduction?&_ga=2.45803424.508154571.1650609947-187713509.1650609947 https://www.solidfi.com/docs/introduction?&_ga=2.45803424.50... EDIT: physical/virtual credit cards
- debarshri 4y agoVery minor nuanced criticism. The company is marketing itself to be developer-first, API first infrastructure, but then the all testimonials I came across are from the CEOs and co-CEOs and not developers. It would be quite powerful and impactful if you have developer testimonials too.
- nonameking2026 4y agoYour website should state on the front page where it is available. Sounds interesting but if I don't know it is available in my country - I won't bother reading it.
- password4321 4y agoI have two separate lines of questioning: 1. Does this paint a bigger target on your back, exposing more via custom APIs than most? 2. What do you plan to ban via Terms of Service? Do you have the stomach for things other payment processors don't? (adult, fringe groups, etc.)
- AviationAtom 4y agoI had pondered whether an API-first bank existed just the other day, searched, but was unimpressed with what I found. I think you guys built the right thing. Wish you all the best in the endeavor!
- Sheen96 4y agoJust so i'm clear on what this is - is this just a bank with a very developer centric and expansive API?
- pjg 4y agoSo this is what Will wanted to do when he left Plaid. Having the financial means to "buy" a bank certainly helped. Nice! Getting a new bank charter since the financial crisis of 2008-2009 has been virtually impossible. The number of banks in the US in the past decade or so has come down from ~6K to ~4K. New licenses for banks (State or Federal ) since 2008 have been negligible. So, let's buy a "small" bank. So far so good Next part is core banking software as well as Money movement software. This is where is gets interesting. Smaller banks use Fiserv/FIS/Jack Henry (and a long tail of other core banking providers) and larger ones have a mix of systems with legacy cores e.g. DXC, Misys and bunch of others. While it's tempting to build an entire banking stack from ground up it may not pass regulatory and compliance muster for a while. Plus even some the legacy cores have now built a rich RESTful API. Would be interesting to know how much of the core was built in house over the past 3 years Next part is Money Movement. This is where ACH, Push to Card, Fedwire and RTP come in ACH isn't that bad. Most banks use ACH "aggregators" which in turn connect to one of the two ACH Operators. Once a bank has a business relationship with the Fed it's not tough to connect to these aggregators and simply sftp files to/from them Push to Card is available through VISA Direct and MC Send. Given their financial resources and fintech background it wouldn't be difficult to get a connection going there RTP would be an interesting one but a relatively easy one since the Clearing House is already used to working with multiple banks and have "plug-ins" So, now it all boils down to the business procedures and KYC/KYB on Fintechs that want to use Column's services. This can be done very efficiently online The T&Cs are heavily skewed in favor of column. Some of them may be unenforceable. But those can be negotiated
- kderbyma 4y agoThis is the XRP ledger without XRP
- glmdev 4y agoNot sure if it's just me, but the website is -really- slow in Firefox. Like, the refresh rate/frame rate is terrible.
- hestefisk 4y agoAny plans for fully fledged transaction banking and treasury services?