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Ask HN: Would you use an API for your personal bank account?

8 points by elwell 13y ago

Transaction notifications primarily. Open to other function ideas.

cryptolect 13y ago
Hell yes. I've been writing API code for a bunch of bitcoin-related exchanges lately, and on reflection, it seems quaint that my bank doesn't offer an API, if only to do read-only queries of transaction history and balances. For instance, if I'm selling bitcoins on localbitcoins, and someone marks a payment sent, it'd be really nice if I could automatically verify at the bank-side, and then automatically release bitcoins to the buyer. The closest I could get to that, is if they (the bank) offered email notifications upon deposits, and I then parsed those to see if they were localbitcoins related. So yes, I'd probably use an API, but I wouldn't expect more than read-only access for average consumer accounts.
pwg 13y ago
If my bank had a properly secure API to download the electronic statement .pdf's they generate I'd use that. It would beat the trouble of having to manually click to download each one, and then being presented with a suggested filename of "session.cgi" to save the thing into (i.e., they are not even smart enough to set the mime headers to give a proper filename to the file).
- glimcat 13y ago
  This is really easy to automate, even without an API. And by "easy" I mean it should take around 30 minutes -- although you could take arbitrarily longer by adding a pretty web UI or reporting or whatever. The problem comes in when you try to do things like "solve this for the thousand most common banks, while not making users enter their credentials every time, with adequate coordination with each bank to avoid being blocked for logging into numerous accounts, with adequate security to avoid mass-leaking online banking credentials."
mschuster91 13y ago
Most German banks already have this with the open HBCI standard, allowing pretty much everything with a bank account. There are lots of apps for every OS providing a wide range of banking features (simple tx list, sending tx, some even placing recurring charges or draft other accounts). German bank Fidor is known for sending a tx notify email immediately after each transaction with your account card.
sytelus 13y ago
Get list of tx for personal finance app that can show trends like Comcast secretly upping their prices or identify tax savings and things like that.
pfyra 13y ago
I created a very basic automated tool in PHP for displaying my accounts balance and transferring money between my accounts in Nordea in Sweden [1]. I happened to put it on github just yesterday. Had they a real API I suppose I would use it rather than this. I have a couple of accounts for different purposes and like to avoid moving the money manually every month. [1] https://github.com/pfyra/nordea-php https://github.com/pfyra/nordea-php

8 points by elwell 13y ago

Transaction notifications primarily. Open to other function ideas.

Hell yes. I've been writing API code for a bunch of bitcoin-related exchanges lately, and on reflection, it seems quaint that my bank doesn't offer an API, if only to do read-only queries of transaction history and balances. For instance, if I'm selling bitcoins on localbitcoins, and someone marks a payment sent, it'd be really nice if I could automatically verify at the bank-side, and then automatically release bitcoins to the buyer. The closest I could get to that, is if they (the bank) offered email notifications upon deposits, and I then parsed those to see if they were localbitcoins related. So yes, I'd probably use an API, but I wouldn't expect more than read-only access for average consumer accounts.

pwg 13y ago

If my bank had a properly secure API to download the electronic statement .pdf's they generate I'd use that. It would beat the trouble of having to manually click to download each one, and then being presented with a suggested filename of "session.cgi" to save the thing into (i.e., they are not even smart enough to set the mime headers to give a proper filename to the file).

glimcat 13y ago
This is really easy to automate, even without an API. And by "easy" I mean it should take around 30 minutes -- although you could take arbitrarily longer by adding a pretty web UI or reporting or whatever. The problem comes in when you try to do things like "solve this for the thousand most common banks, while not making users enter their credentials every time, with adequate coordination with each bank to avoid being blocked for logging into numerous accounts, with adequate security to avoid mass-leaking online banking credentials."

mschuster91 13y ago

Most German banks already have this with the open HBCI standard, allowing pretty much everything with a bank account. There are lots of apps for every OS providing a wide range of banking features (simple tx list, sending tx, some even placing recurring charges or draft other accounts). German bank Fidor is known for sending a tx notify email immediately after each transaction with your account card.

sytelus 13y ago

Get list of tx for personal finance app that can show trends like Comcast secretly upping their prices or identify tax savings and things like that.

pfyra 13y ago

I created a very basic automated tool in PHP for displaying my accounts balance and transferring money between my accounts in Nordea in Sweden [1]. I happened to put it on github just yesterday. Had they a real API I suppose I would use it rather than this. I have a couple of accounts for different purposes and like to avoid moving the money manually every month. [1] https://github.com/pfyra/nordea-php https://github.com/pfyra/nordea-php