
Towards an Open Banking API Standard - jackgavigan
http://jackgavigan.com/2016/02/10/towards-an-open-banking-api-standard/
======
whockey
Total transparency, I'm one of the co-founders of Plaid[1]. Plaid's at the
center of this in the US so we've been following this standard closely. It's
exciting to see Europe and the UK taking this step forward - I'm hopeful that
there will be some exciting news coming from the US pretty soon. More
transparency and accessibility in this space is crucial - at the end of the
day it has to be about enabling developers to build new products and enabling
consumers to have real choice, while at the same time preserving (sometime
arduous) compliance and security needs. If anyone ever wants to nerd out about
banking standards or get involved feel free to shoot me an email at
william[at]plaid.com.

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

~~~
jackgavigan
If there _is_ something happening in the US, it would be great if the UK and
US efforts could align.

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Johnie
When are US banks going to come around to open banking? They need to come
around to the model where they provide the infrastructure and let third
parties manage the customer interaction.

RobinHood's model[1] is pretty interesting in this respect. They are managing
the highly regulated part of stock trading and letting API clients deal with
the customer experience. This enable trading to be done from any number of
apps that consumers are using without those app developers from having to deal
with the regulated investment management component.

This is the model that banks should adopt. Unfortunately, it will take
incumbent a long time to come around to this.

I've written about opening up bank data here:
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/let-my-financial-data-free-
jo...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/let-my-financial-data-free-johnie-lee)

[1]
[http://www.financemagnates.com/fintech/investing/robinhood-g...](http://www.financemagnates.com/fintech/investing/robinhood-
goes-open-with-openfolio-quantopian-stocktwits-and-rubicoin-integration/)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> When are US banks going to come around to open banking? They need to come
> around to the model where they provide the infrastructure and let third
> parties manage the customer interaction.

When they have an incentive to. No one is going to change their business
unless financially incentivized to do so.

To your other point, you can use Bancorp bank if you want to build a tech
platform on top of a real bank. That's how BankSimple (now just Simple.com)
built their platform.

~~~
Animats
_" Let third parties manage the customer interaction."_

Bad idea. Dealing directly with a regulated bank, you know who to blame and
have more legal protections. With some third-party intermediary, who pays for
fraud? App developers will try to wiggle out of taking any responsibility.
PayPal and WePay, for example, have routinely done that.

Read "simple.com"'s user contract.[1]

[1] [https://www.simple.com/policies/bancorp-account-
agreement](https://www.simple.com/policies/bancorp-account-agreement)

~~~
toomuchtodo
+1.

APIs have created this false confidence that every action is an API call away,
until you run up against real-life, necessary regulations (financial, life
safety, etc).

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sjtgraham
If you're in the UK and want a banking API, I'm building
[http://teller.io/](http://teller.io/). It's been in private beta about 2.5
months and access will be opening more broadly soon. I couldn't wait for banks
to get themselves into gear so I reverse engineered all of their mobile apps,
took their private APIs and expose a single unified API through Teller.

So far the RBS banks, e.g. Natwest are in prod. If you bank with them, want
super early access, understand it's beta product and will give some feedback:
sg <> @ <> teller.io

~~~
smt88
There is no way I'd trust my users' security with you when you can't even be
bothered to use SSL.

~~~
sjtgraham
The landing page is a GitHub page. The app itself is
[https://developer.teller.io/](https://developer.teller.io/) and we don't even
listen on port 80 on the API host. Happy to answer any questions you have,
security related or otherwise.

~~~
asabjorn
you might be better off using [http://netlify.com](http://netlify.com) since
they support ssl for static sites

~~~
sjtgraham
Thanks for the tip. The current static site is being taken out of service soon
and the app being moved to the main domain.

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aledalgrande
I so wish this was true, banks are the dinosaurs of IT. I understand they have
security in mind, but it's not possible that in 2016 I still have to go to a
branch of my UK bank to get some things done. An open API would allow 3rd
parties to revolutionize the UX.

~~~
Symbiote
Consider switching banks. It's really easy with the "current account switching
service" (they close the old account, redirect any payments to the new one for
13 months, and switch over all direct debit and standing orders).

That that service exists shows they're not quite the dinosaurs you imagine.

~~~
aledalgrande
Unfortunately I am abroad very often, so it's difficult to find the time to
switch banks. Also, I checked the mobile apps of other banks and they are even
worse.

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CptMauli
For Germany there is HBCI (now FinTS), which is relatively old. Its not really
web oriented, but rather used by banking Software like Quicken.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FinTS](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FinTS)

~~~
jackgavigan
The interesting thing about the availability of HBCI/FinTS in Germany is that
it seems to have fostered a fintech sector there, first with PFM apps and now
with the Open Bank Project and startup banks like Fidor, Avuba and Number26.

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Symbiote
I wonder if it's government regulation that's driven British banks to be
innovators.

"Faster payments" (electronic payments that clear within 2 hours, usually
minutes) were requested by the government. [1].

The Current Accounts Switching Service [2] makes it much easier (zero effort
for the customer) to transfer a current account to a different bank, which the
government also required.

In fact, that's led me to "7 ways banking has been made easier", [3], from the
government.

So, some open data standards seem the natural progression from this.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service#Backgr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service#Background)

[2] [https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bank-account-switching-
se...](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bank-account-switching-service-set-
to-launch)

[3] [https://www.gov.uk/government/news/7-ways-banking-has-
been-m...](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/7-ways-banking-has-been-made-
easier)

Edit to add: The first paragraph of the executive summary of the report is "In
the 2015 Budget HM Treasury announced its commitment to delivering an open
standard for Application Programming Interfaces in UK banking, to help
customers have more control over their data and to make it easier for
financial technology companies (FinTechs) or other businesses to make use of
bank data on behalf of customers in a variety of helpful and innovative ways."

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known
Transparency Begets Trust; However banks make lots of money with
privacy/secrecy;

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alfalfasprout
Hopefully the result isn't as horribly complex as the FIX protocol...

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PaulHoule
How about ISO 20022?

