
Fidor Bank API - edward
http://docs.fidor.de/
======
mcbetz
Figo.me (which afaik has no affiliation with Fidor, despite the resembling
name) has provided a restful API for German banks for some time already. You
can find the docs here: [http://docs.figo.io](http://docs.figo.io)

Among the supported banks you find the big players, such as Deutsche Bank,
Postbank and DKB.

While Fidor has some modern features, such as social payments, they lack
behind when it comes to day-to-day features:

Withdrawing cash, which is still very important in Germany, can only be done
freely three times a month. After that you pay a rather hefty fee. Fidor also
does not offer a Girokarte, which is still the number one payment method in
German shops - online and offline.

All the above mentioned banks offer a better service and some even free credit
cards with unlimited worldwide withdrawals.

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zo1
This is absolutely amazing. I say this as someone that's incredibly frustrated
with the access my bank gives me to _my_ account data.

Anyone have any idea why banks are so closed-minded regarding opening up their
data via APIs? I suppose, now that I think about it, there are all sorts of
regulation hoops that need to be jumped through. Something as simple as "a
financial institution requires positive document identification of client to
release bank statements", which sounds good on paper, but makes API-enabling
an absolute legal nightmare.

~~~
kpil
Any commercial bank that is not totally useless will be able to give you
access to payments, transactions and account statements. There are standards
for this, for instance ISO 20022 (xml based) or older protocols used in the
SWIFT network.

The banks will charge a fair amount for this though, and they will do it only
for large customer and financial institutions. One reason is that it's one of
the thing that they make money from in transactional banking.

One other reason is that it's technically challenging, both for a customer and
the bank to set up a secure message interchange, and there is no standard for
authenticating the messages, or the sender.(That I know of, that's reasonably
sane.)

One other reason is that it's normally a lot of manual work to set up all this
for a customer.

It's also expensive to devlop a solution for this. There are a lot of systems
that handles different things - ledgers, payment systems, message brokers,
authorisation systems, the actual internet banking system, etc. In any case,
it's more than one system and it's complex.

~~~
kpil
That said; Fidor seems to have come a long way, and I know that other banks
are also adding features like this to their internet banks.

Most commercial customers tend to view the transactional part of a bank
(payments, accounts) as an "it service provider" and not as a "bank", so
things like this will absolutely come, also to USA that seems to be a bit old
fashioned in regards to banking.

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nulagrithom
Are there any U.S. banks that provide an API like this and a major
debit/credit card? I've been itching to use something like this.

~~~
zachperret
Here at Plaid ([https://plaid.com/docs](https://plaid.com/docs)), we're trying
to build this for all the major banks.

~~~
colinbartlett
I've started building an app with Plaid and so far, it's amazing. Covers the
major banks (similar to the original ApplePay banks), and has a beautiful API.

It's just sad that the banking infrastructure underneath is still the old
legacy BS. Having to answer security questions or relay two-factor auth is
insane. I yearn for the days when we can OAuth with our banks!

~~~
zachperret
Completely agree. We're working on some of this, but ultimately moving to true
OAuth is going to require the banks to get more deeply involved.

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manigandham
Just to list some interesting similar companies/banks in one place:

[https://standardtreasury.com/](https://standardtreasury.com/)

[https://seed.co/](https://seed.co/)

[https://plaid.com/](https://plaid.com/)

[https://about.holvi.com/en/](https://about.holvi.com/en/)

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

[http://figo.io/](http://figo.io/)

~~~
sjtgraham
I'm working on [http://teller.io/](http://teller.io/) for UK banks. The API
supports read operations as well as write operations, e.g. making payments.
I've integrated 5 banks now working on the 6th and planning to launch this
month.

~~~
robk
How the heck are you getting around all the nonsense with extra online banking
pins and dongles?

~~~
joshuakarjala
Would also love to hear about this

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JetSpiegel
This link [0] has an invalid SSL cert, it's only valid for [1]

0: [https://fidor.de/](https://fidor.de/) 1:
[https://www.fidor.de/](https://www.fidor.de/)

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nissehulth
You can sign up but the only way to verify your account is via PostIdent.
Afaik, that service isn't available anywhere except Germany, Austria and
Switzerland.

I do realize that there is plenty of red tape in the world of banking, but it
would be great to see a "disruptive" bank service on the net that's actually
built for netizens.

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fallenhitokiri
As a customer I hope someone will start working on a native iOS app. Right now
the Fidor app isn't updated very often and lacks a bit usability, even
comparing it to a simple website wrapper like the Deutsche Bank app which
actually works quite nicely and offers convenient features like TouchID sign
in.

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vessenes
Looking for POST account/create, and.. Nope. APIs can only do so much in the
face of regulation. :)

~~~
nailer
There are services like net verify that have Apis you could use for compliance
with anti money laundering rules.

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btmerr
Hey there. I'm the co-founder and CEO of SEED. We launched our banking API a
few weeks ago - [https://seed.co](https://seed.co)

We are only serving business customers for now. Feel free to send me a note at
brian at seed.co if you have any questions.

Thanks!

~~~
StavrosK
Is it only for US companies?

~~~
btmerr
We are only available in the US currently.

~~~
StavrosK
That's too bad, I'd like to try your service out. Thanks anyway, good luck!

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mathgenius
And this from May last year: [http://www.coindesk.com/fidor-becomes-first-
bank-to-use-ripp...](http://www.coindesk.com/fidor-becomes-first-bank-to-use-
ripple-payment-protocol/)

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simi_
I've looked at a lot of documentation systems and ended up using Slate too,
it's pretty great.

[https://github.com/tripit/slate](https://github.com/tripit/slate)

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Jarred
Plaid ([https://www.plaid.com/](https://www.plaid.com/)) does this for credit
cards!

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igorkosta
[http://docs.fidor.de/](http://docs.fidor.de/)

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rashthedude
Am I wrong in assuming that fidor.de and figo.io are the very same thing?

~~~
mcbetz
As far as I can tell from the imprint, there are no connections between the
two companies. One is based in Munich, the other one in Hamburg.

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EC1
Can't wait to see your $5 billion valuation thread in two years!

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einrealist
2015 and no REST API?

