

Standard Treasury (YC S13) Aims To Make Software That Eats Commercial Banking - david_t
http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/09/standard-treasury/

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tbrooks
I'm really interested in a service that allows you to:

a) transfer money between 2 bank accounts for a flat fee

b) allows you to debit a bank account w/o any verification or micro-deposits

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_delirium
'a' is fairly common, I believe. It's ubiquitous in Europe (typically no fee),
and in the U.S., Bank of America will let you do an ACH transfer to any
account in the U.S. for $3/transfer. Not sure what other banks' policies are.

~~~
melvinmt
Coming from Europe, I'm also used to exclusively using wire transfers for
free. Not so much in the US.

What's the difference between a wire transfer and ACH transfer? (Chase charges
me about $19 for every outgoing/incoming wire transfer by the way).

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GeneralMayhem
Wire transfers are directly from one bank to another, and will go through
same-day. ACH is like writing a check, but saves you having to handle the
physical paper. It still goes through all the same automated batch processing
as a check, so it takes a few days to clear.

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crazdan
Kimerling + Townsend = disrupting payments. These guys are great and think
this solution is going to completely disrupt the world.

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100k
Good luck!

I wrote a post a while back about how I would like to be able to set up
triggers to take action on deposits -- a sort of IFTTT for your bank. It
sounds like Standard Treasury ultimately could make this possible, which would
be awesome.

[http://www.recursion.org/2013/3/23/webhooks-for-
paychecks](http://www.recursion.org/2013/3/23/webhooks-for-paychecks)

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zt
Thanks for the link! We have this exact use case in mind, actually. Trigger
based web hooks for transactions is definitely something a few people have
mentioned to us and that we're talking to our bank partners about.

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100k
Cool, I will keep an eye out for announcements regarding this.

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thecodemonkey
This could potentially be huge!

I had a similar problem once, where my local bank couldn't provide enough
functionality through their existing web banking system, so I ended up writing
my own REST API for the bank based on screen scraping / HTML scraping.
Terrible approach for something that involves money, but luckily this was
read-only and only for proof of concept.

~~~
zt
(I work on Standard Treasury)

Screen and HTML scraping is pretty standard for getting information out of
bank systems. That's even primarily what Yodlee does! It's a lot harder to
work directly with the banks, but in the long-term it will allow us to offer
REST APIs and web hooks that make a lot more sense.

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quintinsykes
Connectivity between businesses and bank payment platforms is a huge point of
pain for both banks and their customers. Large banks have been focused on
resolving this with their largest clients (enabling connectivity to SAP,
Oracle, etc.), but there hasn't been a big push elsewhere. Hopefully this will
benefit smaller banks and smaller businesses as well.

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nwenzel
Sounds like what we need... a way to enable a payment from one of our
customers to another. Not a wire, not a credit card transaction, can't require
anything more than a regular bank account on both sides of the transaction.

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7cupsoftea
Zac and Dan know this space inside and out. I've dealt pretty extensively with
Wells Fargo and I can tell you it is extraordinarily painful. These banks need
all the help they can get.

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namdnay
Sounds like a great idea! I wish you strength for the integration part, I do
the same thing in the travel industry, the hidden complexity of these systems
is absolutely incredible. People complain about win32, but this stuff is one
step further. Most of it is still compatible with systems from the early 70s..
Welcome to the wonderful world of TTY, EDIFACT, TPF and all the rest :-)

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malyk
I had the pleasure of working with Dan at Giftly. These guys are smart and
have some big ideas. Looking forward to seeing the company grow.

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kriro
Direct banking customer to customer with an API...oh yes many marketplaces
would enjoy that (essentially acting like a phone operator that connects both
parties).

I can see some value in providing a way for some third party (i.e. the
marketplace) to escrow down the line.

Good luck :)

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marcell
Can someone from Standard Treasury comment on the security model they are
using for these API's?

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zt
This question is one we're still answering with banks. The exact security
model will likely differ slightly by bank, depending on their idiosyncratic
wishes and standards. Also, the security model could be broken down in to (a)
How do we talk to the banks (b) How is our system secured and (c) How do end-
developers talk to our systems.

For the last one, which is what I think you're asking, it seems like our bank
partners will settle on (1) a long, random, high-entropy API secret key (like
Stripe) or SID/auth token combo (like Twilio) or (2) Both the secret key AND
something like OAuth because banks really want multi-factor authorization. But
again, nothing is set yet.

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contingencies
Curious why their logo appears to be a downward-biased ticker with a negative
color combination!

~~~
zt
(I work on Standard Treasury).

Yes! We need a new logo. Know any good designers:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6014763](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6014763)
?

