
Root – Programmable bank account for software developers - s_dev
https://root.co.za/
======
jacksnipe
At first I was wondering what I could possibly use this for, but as I sat and
thought about it, I realized the possibilities are enormous. I'd like to know
if the following are possible:

1\. Forcing me to stay on budget, unless there's an emergency (perhaps allow
purchases over budget after the third attempt).

2\. Automatically distribute paychecks or other income into different accounts
(some to retirement, some to savings, some to checking, w/e...); this behavior
could change based on the current distribution of your money too, so if your
"emergency fund" got really low you could automatically spend more of your
income replenishing it.

3\. Deny unwanted transactions and tightly control your own fraud detection
(SMS confirmation for every purchase out of your zip code, confirmations for
purchases from new places, you name it...).

4\. Automate the creation and destruction of virtual cards to minimize danger
of online purchases or to make sure that "free trial" never starts charging
you.

I'm sure there's tons of other awesome ideas, but I want _all_ of these quite
badly.

~~~
Someone
5\. Due to a bug in _your_ code, accidentally have your mortgage payments
bounce because of lack of funds, and get evicted from your home.

With great power comes great responsibility. The number of times you say
'perhaps', 'unless', 'so if', or 'could' is so high that you would have to
thoroughly review your code before trusting it.

~~~
_jal
Well, sure. But lots of people write code that involves doing things money for
a living. (I do.)

...If someone wants to say, "well sure, but that's not _my_ money", I hope
they'll also name the services or apps they work for, so I can avoid those.

~~~
alexchamberlain
They generally have a team behind them, rather than an individual.

~~~
_jal
...And?

~~~
alexchamberlain
Teams tend to promote good practices, such as code reviews and thorough CI
setups, which are hard to achieve as an individual.

------
s_dev
People asking about what problem this solves haven't been to South Africa or
Zimbabwe which in some ways are ahead of the West in creating cashless
societies.

The biggest bank is a phone operator and people can send each other money over
the phone and from what I understand this is very common. Also interestingly
most phones aren't smart phones. It's mostly analog. Banks have a serious
incentive to create and encourage cashless societies -- because they're
limited by the liquidity ratio.

People there are more skeptical of hard cash there while here it's nearly on
par with Gold in terms of confidence.

I don't think I've to explain offering an API allows third party engagement
and endorsement and an opportunity for others to grow their service. Yes there
are security concerns but these can be all secured from backend.

~~~
nroets
Let me counter with these facts about banking in South Africa:

1\. Fees at most banks are high. (A basic account with no transactions
typically have fees of several dollar per month).

2\. If people are moving away from physical cash, its because of security
concerns (theft and robbery), not liquidity.

3\. Most transactions are done by credit card, debit order or Electronic Fund
Transfer (EFT). EFTs are done between numbered banks account. Mobile to mobile
phone transfers are still very rare.

4\. People are stubornly loyal to their banks. If root fails, it will be cause
of this.

~~~
jay-saint
Regarding # 4. This product is by one the current largest banks in South
Africa. Standard Bank of South Africa is big in S.A and operates in many other
African countries.

------
apostacy
When can I have direct control of recurring payments? I want to be able to
"push" money instead of having it "pulled" from my account.

This is a totally reasonable feature. If a merchant wants assurance that they
will be paid, they should charge a deposit.

The closest I've had is Entropay, but I don't really trust them for large
payments.

Recurring payments are so abused, I can't count how many times I have been
mislead. And there is a strong financial incentive to mislead people. And
having to contact my credit card company after the fact is not good enough.

~~~
moftz
I wish I could just have the ability to create virtual credit card numbers. I
would be able to fill it with a certain balance, set up recurring balance
refills, change the expiration date, keep a merchant whitelist, and cancel the
number at any time. This gives me the opportunity to make sure that even if my
card number was stolen or abused, the charge won't go through. If I sign up
for a free trial or a service I only want for x months but need a card on
record, I give them a virtual number and set the card up to cancel itself
after the period is up. Or if I want to put all my netflix, hulu, pandora, etc
charges on one number, I can set a monthly allowance for each merchant. If
someone changes their prices, the charge gets declined and I can go back and
reup the limit if I want.

~~~
apostacy
I use entropay.com, which lets you create virtual credit cards, and pre-charge
them. And if the account runs out of money, the transaction is declined, and
the merchant has no way to get your money after that.

As a warning, there are some problems with entropay.com though. Over the last
year, some merchants have been able to detect that entropay.com virtual credit
cards are prepaid, and require a plastic card. Also, entropy cards are from
Malta, so companies like Spotify or Netflix will only give you access to
content licensed there. Finally, and most importantly, entropay.com has a
tendency to "float" your money, and I've heard that sometimes they just snatch
it. I've never dealt with more than $150 at a time.

Since they are based in Malta, I think it would be very hard to dispute
anything with them. But if you have to do any bigger transactions, you should
use a bank here anyway. But it's great for trying out services where you don't
trust them, or are just concerned with overages. I use them as a buffer for a
lot of recurring payments.

I've seen some services on hackernews that offer virtual credit cards, but the
problem is, that they all are tied to some underlying checking account, and
even if the prepaid balance is declined, the company is obligated to somehow
collect the money, if they can. There's no way to simply cancel a recurring
payment. I'm sure that this is because they are required to by banks in the
US.

I really wanted to have a complex money firewall, like you describe, but in
practice, I've ended up just using plain old credit cards for most things. It
is still very good to have an entropay account, though.

~~~
halfdgvfyjjuc
Netflix gives access to content based on the country you (or rather your IP)
are physically present in.

------
balabaster
I love the concept of this... it took me a minute to figure out how I could
get the most out of it, but the possibilities are endless... the fact that I
can write my own rules that can manage my account semi-autonomously for me and
know that my code is always watching my back even when I'm not - which is most
of the time is awesome. I can have this account do everything I call the bank
to get them to do and be told there's no facility for that. Things like
automatically taking the remainder of my chequing account balance and dumping
it into my savings account as my pay is being deposited so my account starts
fresh from 0.00 each month and all surpluses are put into savings accounts. I
can then have some kind of AI monitoring investments and automatically
transferring money in and out of my investment accounts and TFSA... I love
love love this idea. It could _almost_ become a pension manager.

What I _don 't_ love is the lack of information they have on their website.
They're in South Africa, does this mean the service is only available for
South African residents and Rands? Or can we get international accounts for
U.S. and Canadian dollars and more?

Anyone have any further info other than what the site presents? Do we have any
founders or insiders reading that can enlighten us further?

~~~
cpcat
Yes on the ProductHunt page they mention it'll be only available for South
African residents as a start.
[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/root-6](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/root-6)

~~~
balabaster
Thanks, that's too bad

------
louwhopley
Founder here :) Feel free to ask me any questions

~~~
dheera
\- Do you have programmable international wire transfers in the works? That
would be an instant sell to me. My current bank requires me to show up in
person, and then verify the transfer by phone, both of which require making
time out of a busy schedule.

\- Do you have programmable virtual credit card numbers?

\- Have you considered virtual bank account numbers as well? For example, I
have had issues with organizations continuing to deduct from my account via
ACH after stopping service. If I had a virtual bank account number that could
be deleted, those rascals could be stopped in their tracks the moment I make
the call saying "you are no longer authorized to deduct from my account". With
the current system banks still let the unauthorized ACH transactions slide.

~~~
ledgerdev
> Do you have programmable virtual credit card numbers?

Marqueta can do this. You can issue CC's via api, and then fund them with Visa
direct. It's amazing.

[https://www.marqeta.com/](https://www.marqeta.com/)

------
egeozcan
I'd like to have something like this for Germany. I am willing to pay
10€/month for a simple API access to my bank account. I need neither hosted
code nor push. Just give me remote access for my scripts.

Probably I'm asking for the impossible because of the heavy regulation in
Germany but just wanted to put it out there.

~~~
thesimon
N26 has got a quite decent REST API if you are willing to use your dev tools
for a bit :)

Edit: Most banks also seem to support FinTS [0], but it seems a bit of a PITA.

Edit 2: figo might be worth a try as well, though I don't know their pricing.

Edit 3: bunq is quite nice as well. I implemented a few basic calls in node
when they launched the API. Not the easiest API to work with, but acceptable.

[0]: [https://www.hbci-zka.de/index.htm](https://www.hbci-zka.de/index.htm)

[1]: [https://www.figo.io/en/](https://www.figo.io/en/)

[2]: [https://www.bunq.com/de/api](https://www.bunq.com/de/api)

[3]: [https://github.com/c0dr/bunq](https://github.com/c0dr/bunq)

~~~
sigi45
Don't trust them. They really fucked up there security.

[https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7969-shut_up_and_take_my_money](https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7969-shut_up_and_take_my_money)

~~~
matt4077
No need, you can instead trust the common deposit insurance (up to 100,000
Euro)

------
Meekro
Anyone remember Seed[1], the YC startup that tried to do programmable bank
accounts years ago? They did eventually launch, and I have an account, but all
the programmable stuff went away and we're left with basic business bank
accounts rather than the original vision.

I wonder what happened there, and I hope Root can better stay on track!

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9066363](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9066363)

~~~
btmerr
Hey there. I'm Brian, the CEO of Seed. Thanks for remembering us and thank you
for trying us out. :)

Long story short, we're still working on making the API available to our
members. Plans changed along the way and we ended up releasing our mobile
business bank account first, but our long term goal of offering a more open
platform remains.

It's tough to do anything innovative within the US banking system due to
regulations, partner challenges, risk, and other factors, but we're going to
keep working at it.

~~~
Meekro
Hey Brian, I'm glad to hear that you guys are still at it! Your original
vision is exactly what I wanted. We got an account for our small business
because paying contractors with a monthly cron job that initiates an ACH
transfer is exactly the kind of nerdy thing we want to do. We're using it, and
waiting for the API to come along.

I hope you guys succeed! Not many startup founders look at the tangled mess of
regulations that is the financial sector and think, "now that's where I want
to be!"

------
marcosbeirig
> Extend your account by building new features and integrating with other
> services using our securely hosted JavaScript code.

Your current balance is: NaN

~~~
undefinedblog
which is a 'number' LOL

------
hoschicz
I've sent them an email asking them if they are planning to be SAR-only,
here's the reply:

Hi Ondřej,

We're launching in South Africa, but have plans to expand to the EU/US in the
near future.

Be sure to sign up to our waiting list, as we'll keep everyone there posted on
new events :)

~~~
yaur
Very interested in this when you come to the US as long as it has a reasonable
fee structure.

------
bongonewhere
Hi All, If you are interested in talking to the devs they can be found in
#root on zatech slack group For invites check
[https://zatech.github.io/site/](https://zatech.github.io/site/)

disclaimer: Not a root dev just a user on the zatech slack group

~~~
louwhopley
Thanks bongonewhere :) I'm also on here to answer some Q's

------
tarr11
What problem does this attempt to solve? Their slack example doesn't seem
particularly pressing.

~~~
azeirah
Analyse your spending habits to see where you can easily save some money is
one example.

~~~
m3ta
My BofA account has a whole spending habits section with graphics and charts
and a ton of features, for free, which comes with my debit account. Why would
I want to do all this myself?

The only real answer is privacy, but I would just use BTC instead of USD if I
wanted privacy anyway, and BTC is already programmable.

~~~
azeirah
> Why would I want to do all this myself?

My bank doesn't have this, so that's one reason.

Another would be that a third-party could write the code that performs the
analysis, you should be able to just download (or purchase, I suppose) their
script and use it, so you don't have to do it yourself anyway. This also means
it becomes possible to have competition within this space, right now, you can
only ever use your bank's analysis tools, if they're great, fine whatever good
for you. But for some people it'll have limitations one way or another.
Competition is not a bad thing.

Besides, it can be fun to look at your financial data with your programming
tools. It's an interesting data set to play around with, analysis, data
visualization, budgeting, even if just for learning.

~~~
jsudhams
Used yodlee multiple banks and works perfect. Can do most of this spend
reports and budget part of it.

------
djm_
If anyone's looking for API access to UK high street banks:
[https://teller.io](https://teller.io)

~~~
sjtgraham
Thanks! Founder here. Currently in private beta, but if you're with Santander,
Nationwide, RBS, Natwest, Ulster Bank NI, or IOM Bank I can give you access -
sg@teller.io.

~~~
bjackman
Have you integrated this directly with the banks or do you take user's login
details and scrape the online banking sites (like MoneyDashboard does)?

I would be more than willing to switch banks just to get a read-only API for
this kind of thing, if only it was properly integrated (read: I don't have to
give my login details to a third party)

~~~
sjtgraham
Teller uses the APIs used by the bank's own mobile app, i.e. they have been
reverse-engineered. Whether Teller requires personal credentials is dependent
on the bank's implementation. Barclays (integration temporarily unavailable),
and Nationwide use EMV CAP (the card reader) for registration. If we can
figure out a way to not take user credentials, we will always take that route.

I recommend Starling and Monzo if you want a read-only API for your own
account, but if you want to build apps for 65 million customers they're not
yet much use to you.

~~~
bjackman
Cool, thanks for the info. It's such a shame we have to resort to (slightly)
compromising on security & reliability to make banking work for consumers. Do
you think there's a future where there's a standard API that banks expose for
authorised apps to get at customer data?

------
cryptarch
In the EU this is soon going to be solved by the PSD2 system. Coming in
November 2018 or later, depending on how soon the regulations are finalized.

It's a mandatory-to-implement protocol, which will allow consumers to give 1st
and 3rd parties API access to their bank accounts.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
What protections are in place so that third party doesn't have a glitch and
take all a person's money?

~~~
Tharkun
The same protections that are in place to access bank accounts right now.
Strong authentication being the most obvious one.

------
madamelic
Is this South Africa only? Any plans on coming to the US? :)

~~~
louwhopley
yes, and yes ;) (but not immediately)

------
artursapek
I wish brokerages/banks had APIs, even just for reading. I've tried just
reading my Fidelity transactions with a script and they seem to have blocked
my server.

~~~
medmunds
You might check into the
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange)
format. Software like Quicken is able to download transactions from several
banks and brokerages using it. (I don't know what's involved in getting access
to its endpoints, though.)

~~~
curryhowardiso
> Microsoft, Intuit and CheckFree announced the OFX standard on 16 January
> 1997.

> Many banks in the US let customers use personal financial management
> software to automatically download their bank statements in OFX format, but
> most Canadian,[2][3][4] United Kingdom and Australian (CBA exports OFX and
> QIF files) banks do not allow this.

I'm not criticizing - we need to do better! Developers demand JSON!!! :)

------
swalsh
I think the power of this is potentially not the apps I'll write for myself,
but the apps other people write. Without knowing anything about it, this might
potentially allow people to do the 100 things that would be nice, but didn't
quite provide enough value to justify building the underlying infrastructure.

I think you can compare it to going back to 1993, and wanting to build Yelp,
but having to invent, and sell the phone to go along with it.

This could be huge.

------
mikorym
I find it interesting that this comments section has become as proudly South
African as Stellenbosch Sauvignon Blanc.

I don't even need to read whatever the API (or legislation) says to understand
how we got to this.opportunity. My little experience on any topics of any
importance tell me that maybe there should be a little context to this whole
thing.

So, let me make some pseudorandom comments that may be of use to all the
shadow followers here.

South Africa is the Best Country in the World ®. They are ahead in nature
conservation (nr 1). They have wide open spaces (you can hide from
belligerents through obscurity). They have extreme safety. As in, you're
either very safe, or very unsafe. And the difference could be a couple of
seconds. They even have Very Good Universities ®. Finally, they have fertile
opportunities, since the rest of Africa is pretty broken (except maybe some of
the neighbours who are pretty not broken).

But the core issue here, just like at every previous timestamp, is politics.
There is a big philosophical battle raging that is based on concepts such as
"I was here first", "I claimed this first", "We are all African, except you",
"I am the sharpest pencil", "Everybody deserves a certificate", "I am actually
building something", "Take away all the buildings" and then, the most popular
one, which is: "I also want some spears".

Anyway, the point is the following. Banks are kinda evil, while banks in SA
seems to try to be not evil, except when they don't. This is a complicated
thing. Just as complicated as Zuma & Ramaphosa, inc. There are also people who
already have spears that like to poke things.

Now, the everybody deserves a certificate thing is not such a good idea. (Ask
Mark Shuttleworth). But if one notices, when it comes to tech, South Africa
has always been rather bright. Solar panels, batteries, pretty aircraft, etc
etc.

Anyway, sorry for all the bad jokes. The point I wanted to make is this: South
Africa is still the best entry point into Africa. Things like
these.innovations are reassuring and sometimes exciting. But the problem is
not neo-colonisation as much as Africa colonising other parts of Africa (with
the help of others ®).

Don't worry too much about the details, rather imagine what you would want
them to be. The South Africans would probably implement it then.

------
coding123
Going a little beyond, why not offer this to ANYONE. So once a lot of
developers create a bunch of apps, people that are not developers can browse
apps that have special integrations that are important for those people. I get
they want to attract developers right now however.

------
KirinDave
This is the sort of thing American banks just can't do at scale.

Which is probably a good thing, to be honest.

~~~
mcherm
Don't bet on that.

~~~
KirinDave
I mean, I did and I got a lot of money from betting on that. I'm post exit on
precisely that bet, and were I not so incredibly tired of fintech I'd bet
again.

Many national American banks are toxically opposed to actual modernization,
for a variety of reasons. Their classical "enterprise" beliefs on security put
all the banks _I 've_ talked to well behind the curve.

But also, I want to avoid a scenario where the US is a principle innovator in
technology and also in finance.

~~~
mcherm
> Many national American banks are toxically opposed to actual modernization,
> for a variety of reasons.

That is true of many, but not of all. I work for a US bank of national scope
that IS working hard to achieve actual modernization.

~~~
KirinDave
I'm almost certain I know who you work for, and if I'm right I'm contractually
obligated to end the conversation here.

Good luck.

------
bbno4
How is this different from Monzo?

~~~
esMazer
I don't see any mention on Monzo's page about having an API.

EDIT: Found a blog post about it! [https://monzo.com/blog/2016/02/03/mondo-
api/](https://monzo.com/blog/2016/02/03/mondo-api/) cool!

~~~
fastball
[https://monzo.com/docs/](https://monzo.com/docs/)

??

~~~
esMazer
yep found it: [https://developers.monzo.com/](https://developers.monzo.com/)

------
fixxer
As someone who doesn't want to share my creds with Mint or rummage through GNU
Cash to write my own solution, this looks like a great idea. I'd love to build
a consolidated dashboard for my networth with APIs like this.

------
spanishgum
I wonder if anyone would ever be willing to link this up to a personal website
and publicly display all transactions live. That would take transparency to a
whole new level. Call me crazy but I feel compelled.

------
t3po7re5
As someone who works at a credit card company Transaction data usually doesn't
look that clean. But this is a cool concept, looking forward to ideas that are
implemented!

------
Kinnard
Might be confused with Rootstock: [https://medium.com/@CryptoIQ.ca/rootstock-
smart-contracts-on...](https://medium.com/@CryptoIQ.ca/rootstock-smart-
contracts-on-the-bitcoin-blockchain-e52b065421a8)

It's a blockchain programming layer aiming to implement Ethereum's virtual
machine on top of Bitcoin's blockchain . . . programmable bitcoin accounts . .
.

------
matdehaast
Hey, @louwhopley. So cool to see this project on HN! Signed up for your early
access a few weeks ago and hope to get access soon.

I think there is a lot of opportunities still within Africa for the informal
sector with technology. However, the FICA guidelines make it quite difficult
to operate in this space. Do you see a future where we can service this sector
better whilst still be compliant?

~~~
louwhopley
That's part of our mission :)

------
keenboy
Is there anything like this available now in the US? I've wanted this for
years! Right now I've cobbled together a version of this using direct deposit
to several accounts, auto-transfers every week, etc. but I'd really like more
control (e.g., I'd like to deposit a daily allowance to my "spending money"
debit card).

------
ensiferum
Seems exciting for the few developers in the world who would want to use this.
Then again I'd be wary of trusting my money with some random small bank in a
foreign country. Probably not even possible to use it in the first place. Also
if this was ever going to get big I'm sure the big boys would step in and have
it shut down in no time

------
theprop
Hmmm...it's very unlikely that everyone who will open a "Root" account will
write their own apps to control their account. So the idea is that any
developer can create a "Root" app for my "Root" bank account...and then sell
my data, get hacked, start transferring my money without my knowing it?!

------
rkv
Since the very beginning of online banking I've wanted two things: IP
whitelisting and a master switch to enable/disable withdrawals. I've settled
for 2FA but even top banks in Canada are still not offering it.

I work in security and have witnessed some extremely well-crafted endpoint
malware that can intercept banking sessions.

------
nodesocket
This looks incredibly awesome. A few questions though.

    
    
      1.) Can I open a business account?
      2.) FDIC insured?
      3.) Out of South Africa makes me very nervous. What protections/assurances are offered for US customers?
    

Reminds me of when I first saw /dev/payments (Stripe) launch. Great potential.

------
jboggan
I can't wait to have race conditions in my bank account!

But seriously, this looks really interesting, sign me up.

------
Charliecf
Very interesting concept... this kind of accessibility opens a lot of
possibilities

For example: simple things like better tracking my budgets or pulling
transaction history. I have a pain doing that from my banks who gives me PDF
or only goes back 6 months of data

------
ic4l
Are there any US banks that offer such a credit card api at the transaction
level where you can reject within XX seconds? Been looking for something like
this forever, or is there a way to partner with a bank for less than $1m to do
such a thing?

------
dmitripopov
Every time I stumble upon something like this a little wannabe-programmer kid
in me wakes up and screams: "WOW!!! This thing is PROGRAMMABLE! I can CONTROL
IT!". Good job, guys! It seems like you've hit the right spot :)

------
archeantus
This looks amazing. I actually spent several months making an awesome Mint
killer. The only problem was getting access to bank data that wasn't crazy
expensive.

If this pans out, I've got a beautiful app ready to roll! Anyone want to help
out?

~~~
curryhowardiso
Have you seen plaid.com? Also - yes :)

------
matt_wulfeck
Does anyone know how much data is offered on the retailers where money is
spent? This is important. I'd like to easily classify and organize purchases
similar to mint without having to hand all of my data over to a third party.

------
cstrat
This is something I have wished banks would one day provide! Aussie banks
might one day catch on. Love to read a write up in 6 months from someone who
has played around and got this working. See how useful it really is.

------
baconomatic
This will be interesting to watch. I'm hoping they have sandbox accounts!

~~~
louwhopley
Hey @baconomatic, founder here - we do have a sandbox built in so that you can
test your scripts/programs first before running letting it touch your real
money :)

~~~
baconomatic
Awesome! I was half kidding, because I would definitely have a typo and send
my money who knows where.

------
pmlnr
[https://monzo.com/](https://monzo.com/) \- they are already up and running,
with lifted banking licence and they have an API.

------
grandalf
This is very clever. I'd like to be able to "guard" my account by declining
certain transactions, even if I made them willingly or agreed to have them
scheduled.

------
musikele
In Italy there is a similar solution, more targetized to ventures and
companies: [http://platfr.io](http://platfr.io)

------
hbk1966
The more I think about this the more brilliant it becomes.

------
AnsemWise
This is fantastic, I've been thinking about this for years.

Allow your code to exert willpower over your budget when your's is lacking

------
jurandom
Cool. I see parallels with Ethereum here. How complex can the rules be? Could
you have smart contract functionality?

~~~
louwhopley
The rules can be as complex as the code you can write. It effectively sends a
webhook on which you can respond "decline" to stop the tx from succeeding.
(RootCode also packages this concept to make it quicker to prototype)

~~~
lightbyte
Is there a timeout for approving/declining transactions? I'd be interested in
setting up a sort of 2FA for large/over budget transactions where I'd have to
manually approve it before it goes through.

e.g. "You've already spent over your monthly Amazon budget by X amount, are
you sure you want to make this $200 purchase?"

------
kusmi
Sounds like it would be neat to use this for a business account. Just need a
corporate accountant chatbot.

------
33W
What considerations do persons in the US need to take into account before
opening a foreign bank account?

------
EGreg
Finally! Can I write scripts to for example trade some stuff for bitcoin, pay
people etc.

------
solidsalvia
Wells Fargo is introducing an API for small businesses last I heard.

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/its-bonkers-
that-...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/its-bonkers-that-banks-
dont-provide-apis-wells-fargo-xero)

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Nalta
I really really do not want the ability to write bugs in my bank account.

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Zangoran
Is there anything like this for the US? Really cool product though.

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crispytx
Does anybody know anything about the company behind this, OfferZen?

~~~
reviseddamage
this is the main challenge startups in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia
will face when trying to launch financial service alternatives; Fear and
distrust of the young and unknown and subservient loyalty to the mature and
known.

~~~
crispytx
Haha, no I don't distrust them. I want to invest when they go public!

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glitchfreak
Any idea when this will launch in beta? Really keen to try it out.

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fazkan
Finally, have been waiting for this for a long time now.

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IMTDb
Is this US only or available anywhere (Belgian inside)

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cosinetau
That's a legit name.

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duke360
i think this is great! i want an account there!

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LoSboccacc
what could possibly go wrong

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brilliantcode
> Powered by Standard Bank South Africa

Doesn't give me much confidence. Allgedly hacked & involved in a fraud case
[1] [2]

[1] [http://city-press.news24.com/Business/standard-
bank-r300m-fr...](http://city-press.news24.com/Business/standard-
bank-r300m-fraud-case-linked-to-hacking-20160701)

[2] [https://businesstech.co.za/news/mobile/170629/major-sa-
banks...](https://businesstech.co.za/news/mobile/170629/major-sa-banks-taken-
to-court-over-internet-fraud/)

~~~
lalitkale
In addition to that you can observe that their website's certificate details.
it seems they are using fee ssl provided from cloudfare. Not really a
confidence booster and definitely not even close to fintech security which we
can trust.

Mastercard logo is displayed without any hint that they are official partner
of visa or mastercard. The said bank and offerzen site does not have links
etc. There is no documentation or hints about legal disputes resolution or any
kind of compliance mechanism ever mentioned on site.

Though I like the concept, will hold off still I get to know that the site is
genuine.

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neuralFatigue
I wonder if they'll get a C & D over 'Erlich Bachman' .

~~~
ChicagoBoy11
What is this referring to? Like, where is there a reference to SV on their
site?

~~~
d3fr4gm3nt
The right top corner of the user interface screenshot has the user name.

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edw519
_Root is a lightweight bank account designed to be accessible through code._

Wait, what? Code you write yourself?

Sounds like they may have accidentally provided the perfect solution to
different problem: technical recruiting and screening.

No more technical interviews. If your code doesn't work, you don't get your
money. Woo hoo, problem solved.

