
Show HN: Hack Club Bank – A Bank for Student Hackers - zachlatta
https://medium.com/hackclub/hack-club-bank-is-now-live-for-everyone-including-you-884f7f54836f
======
infinitebattery
A college hackathon organizer here (and former high school hackathon
organizer). This is so useful. Dealing with high school/university
administration takes up an incredible amount of time. When it came to
reimbursements, my university took months to pay back student organizers who
paid out of their own pocket to buy last minute items.

------
blennon
This is a great example of a niche banking solution which is far better than
any traditional bank can provide. I think we'll see a lot more of this as
banking APIs become more available.

My company is working on similar problem and solution for youth sports teams
and clubs which are also non-profits (formally or informally).

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I think we 'll see a lot more of this as banking APIs become more
> available._

Available to whom, though? Companies with millions of dollars of capital or VC
money?

I've been asking for, in the past decade, is a read/write API access to my
personal account. I can make it work from there myself, and I can do it better
than the bank. Hell, even just read-only access would streamline my banking
and solve 90% of the use cases I have in mind. But no, it didn't happen, and
it's not going to happen.

And I suspect why: because web and mobile apps are first and foremost a way
for the bank to upsell financial products.

~~~
kennydude
Keep an eye on Monzo and Starling Bank who offer public APIs :)

------
gailees
Even as a college hackathon organizer, bank accounts were a huge hassle that
almost sank our event. This is incredible.

Every student should have the opportunity to go to a hackathon.

Infrastructure like this is crucial to increasing access.

------
ProjectBarks
Zach is killing it. Me and him had lunch about 3 years ago and to see this
grow into something that is empowering hackers is heart warming.

High school hackers are one of the most under-appreciated technological
innovators.

------
ValentineC
Fantastic discussion from 8 months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17417593](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17417593)

Congratulations on your launch!

------
zie
Overall interesting, except I wonder how they manage to make it legal since
basically no jurisdiction anywhere lets anyone under age sign legal contracts.
So some adult somewhere is legally responsible, and if they are remote as this
suggests, that's just asking for trouble.

This doesn't seem to include insurance, liability issues, etc.

Get a teacher at any public school in the USA to sponsor you (i.e. a school
club), and suddenly the Public School System will handle _ALL_ of this
insanity for you, and ran through the schools bookstore(usually).

Plus they will eat all of the costs of running it, the insurance problems, the
liability issues, etc. If you are under 18 and need this stuff, it's probably
easier to just find a teacher to sponsor you and let them deal with all these
headaches.

I imagine other countries have similar system(s) in place through their
schools. It's not like "hackers" suddenly created these problems.

~~~
zachlatta
Parents co-sign contracts with students, but our contracts are designed to
work elegantly with co-signers, different than similar programs. We're really
just a modern fiscal sponsor
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_sponsorship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_sponsorship))
designed for students that has a financial model that is still viable when
project budgets are small (i.e. <$5K). We cut costs by writing software to do
repetitive work, like producing basic financial reports, instead of hiring
humans. You'd be shocked by some of the work fiscal sponsors do manually.

Student organizer teams assume liability for their events with our model, but
we equip them with liability releases for attendees and have a relationship
with a great insurance broker they can use to acquire insurance if needed.

You're right: some schools offer financial services, but they're often poorly
managed due to lack of resources and are usually only available in well-off
areas. Even then, most teachers and school administrators are already crushed
by the burden of their workload and are hesitant to take on additional work,
especially if it involves potential liability issues. There are probably
students in this thread who have had that experience of being turned away—it's
pretty common.

~~~
ada1981
At my high school the teacher advisor of the school store also taught social
studies.

In his class you could buy snacks, passes to get out of homework or pop
quizzes, rights to sit on the couch, etc.

He also made us pick stocks and bring in cash so he could buy them for us and
said we’d get the $$$ + any profits back when we graduated.

When we were seniors and asked for the cash from all those stock picks he
acted like we didn’t know what we were talking about.

Years later he got fired for accidentally stabbing a student during a very
realistic wagon train history unit.

This guy was really amazing. Before being a teacher apparently he owned a
strip club in LA but claimed to be converted by evangelical christian
protesters outside his club so he packed up and moved to Erie, PA to become a
HS teacher.

This is the kinda guy you want handling your club finances. ;)

~~~
zie
Sadly bad actors still exist everywhere, we haven't managed as a
society/culture/race(as in the human race) figure out how to eradicate bad
actors yet.

That said most public schools now are required by law to have a bunch of
checks and balances and it's probably fairly rare that teachers are allowed to
directly handle money much anymore. In my schools every employee has to go
through a training every year about how the district handle's money, and your
role in it (as a teacher/employee/etc) so it's at least now very clear what
you are allowed and not allowed to do.

------
torbjorn
Mostly unrelated question related to banks, does anyone know of banks that
expose an api that owners of consumer checking accounts can use? Specifically
to do things like read balance and recent transactions. What banks make this
easy and have good documentation?

~~~
madeofpalk
In the UK, Monzo has a fairly good API for reading your account details,
balance and transactions. It's 'private access only' (can only access your
account) [https://developers.monzo.com](https://developers.monzo.com)
[https://docs.monzo.com](https://docs.monzo.com)

~~~
lol768
+1 for Monzo. The API works with their business accounts (in preview), too.

Worth noting it's opened up to regulated AISPs now too, so it's no longer only
available for consumers to use to access their own information.

~~~
madeofpalk
Monzo has business accounts in preview? This is very relevant information for
me... any idea how you can get in?

~~~
lol768
> Monzo has business accounts in preview? This is very relevant information
> for me... any idea how you can get in?

There's a waitlist over at
[https://monzo.com/business/](https://monzo.com/business/) but you're
unfortunately too late for the initial test of 100 users.

------
XiZhao
Amazing! Young hackers I know have been so blocked by this problem. I don't
think most people remember how suffocating it was be a high school student --
this will be a big change for so many young hackers I know.

------
zbruhnke
Congrats on getting this launched Zach! I really enjoyed our talk and the
vision. Still hope we can find a way to work together at some point!

------
pah861
Amazing work y'all - this is incredible and no doubt going to impact so many
young hackers building things.

------
jakejarvis
Congrats guys, great execution! Surely this can and should be applied to all
sorts of other school clubs/events down the road, I know it would have been
incredibly helpful for the clubs I was in back then. But I’m always a fan of
starting small and niche. :)

------
anon4lol
Most states have laws on the books that forbid you from calling your business
a "bank," "pharmacy," or other restricted business unless it actually is.
Simply doing so is enough to trigger regulatory intervention. I'm really
surprised that they are advertising their services as the "Hacker Club Bank."

Then I finally saw a disclaimer at the bottom of one of the pages: "Hack Club
does not directly provide banking services. Banking services provided by
Silicon Valley Bank, an FDIC-certified institution."

Seems a little sleazy to me, but still, a neat service.

------
kieranbro
Giving hackers bank accounts has a nice ring to it :D

------
zanedb
I’m consistently amazed by what the Hack Club team is able to accomplish –
amazing launch!

------
akeck
Is using the word bank allowed?

------
faissaloo
One more step towards youth liberation!

