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Back in 2014 I was tired of how awful the Mint app was and I wanted to make a banking app of my own (that I affectionately called Basil). The premise was that i
by archeantus 3y ago
Back in 2014 I was tired of how awful the Mint app was and I wanted to make a banking app of my own (that I affectionately called Basil). The premise was that it would be like Mailbox (remember that flash in the pan email app?) but for finances. You’d swipe on every transaction to make sure they were categorized correctly. I even wired it up to my local bank’s very rudimentary API.
It was beautifully designed (thanks to some help from a designer friend) and I was really proud of the architecture and Objective-C code.
A large retailer reached out to me on LI and asked about a job. As part of the interview process they asked me to submit a code sample and I submitted basil. The senior dev in the interview commented that he didn’t have any negative comments about the code but instead spent the interview telling me the things he liked about it. It was so fun and gratifying to get that feedback and I got the job and worked there for seven years. It totally changed the direction of my career!
- coolThingsFirst 3y agoHow difficult was it to connect to banking API to get the transaction list?
- jfidjsosms 3y agoNot many banks offer APIs to pull transactions. It's easy if you don't mind usign a third party like plaid. I wanted a solution for managing personal finances and didn't want a third party getting a copy of all my financial data, so had to build my own. I ended up building a solution using sqlite and Apache superset, however it used a module that imported data from exports from the banks (so that was a manual step)
- grepfru_it 3y agoI do not know how to reconcile the obvious advantage using plaid gives you with the obvious privacy problems it brings for users
- pzmarzly 3y agoMost banks do offer APIs due to various regulations [0], but they don't have to offer these APIs to end users, just to other (regulated and certified) companies. Also the output format can be a wild west. Therefore there is not much practical choice other than to use Plaid, Nordigen, Basiq, etc. Afaik European PSD3 wants to address these 2 issues [1], but it will probably take 3+ years before it gets into effect. [0] https://www.openbankproject.com/solutions/compliance/ https://www.openbankproject.com/solutions/compliance/ [1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_3543 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...
- stpn 3y agoI am actually currently working on something like this - inbox zero style (don't have swipe gestures built yet) finances tool where you check/set the category. What's old is new I guess. Is basil still around? Would be interested in taking a look.