
Root partners with Standard Bank South Africa to offer programmable bank account - tefo-mohapi
https://www.iafrikan.com/2017/04/07/offerzen-in-partnership-with-standard-bank-south-africa-is-launching-root-a-programmable-bank-account/
======
jimmies
This is an awesome idea. The only thing I log in to my account is to literally
run this in my head a couple of times a month. I usually have a couple of
active credit cards with different due dates on them so this is at least
annoying to keep track of.

    
    
        safe_margin = rent + food + 500
        emergency_fund_bal = monthly_salary * 3
    
        // pay all credit cards if I can
        sort(my_credit_cards, apr) 
        for (cc in my_credit_cards) {
          if (cc.statement_bal == 0 || cc.paid) skip
          if (checking.bal - cc.statement_bal - safe_margin >= 0) {
            pay(to=cc, from=checking, amount=cc.statement_bal);
            cc.paid = 1
          } else if (checking.balance > cc.min_pay)  {
            pay(to=cc, from=checking, amount=cc.min_pay)
          }
        }
    
        // refill the emergency funds if needed and can
        if (savings.bal < emergency_fund_bal && checking.bal > safe_margin) {
          transfer(from=checking, to=checking, 
            amount=min(
              emergency_fund_bal - savings.bal, 
              checking.bal - safe_margin)
           )
        }
    
        // invest the rest
        if (checking.bal > safe_margin) {
          invest(checking.bal - safe_margin)
        }

~~~
hdhzy
Glad I'm not the only one that'd be happy to have a proper api for their bank.

In Europe to upcoming PSD2 directive basically requires banks to expose the
api. In the mean time I'm abusing JSON/HTTP api my bank has built for their
own RWD app...

------
malanj
Founder here - let me know if you have any questions! More details at
[https://root.co.za/](https://root.co.za/)

~~~
m23khan
Hi malanj,

Can you point on some use cases this may serve? Is the intention to allow
mobile app developers to create e-wallet type apps. for the bank account? Or
perhaps hook it up to e-assisstant such as Alexa?

~~~
malanj
We've actually done an Amazon Echo integration :-) So you can do things like
check balance, or send money to a predefined set of contacts etc.

A lot of the use-cases getting interest seem to be related to spending
management. E.g. company cards for everyone in a team that integrates with
Slack. So when you spend on the card it notifies you, and asks you to submit
the payment receipt directly on Slack.

~~~
boris
\- Hey, Echo, send two thousand rand to Mike

\- Ok, sending twenty thousand rand to Mike

\- Noooooooo! Two thousand

\- Ok, also sending twenty thousand to Nolan

------
kodfodrasz
This is very exciting. In the EU the fintech revolution is also banging the
gates, as in 2018 all banks must support a standard protocol, if I recall
correctly.

~~~
bkkssnn
It's called Psd2, strugling to find a good article about it but TLDR; Banks
has to have an open api for payments and to check account statuses.

~~~
ksahin
" Banks has to have an open api" are you sure about that ? I thought there was
some criteria to be able to use these APIs

~~~
ozim
Yes but account owner or user will be able to give permission for access to
his banking data. So you will be able to use your fav accounting app to fetch
data directly from account without doing csv export or hacking something
around.

~~~
ccozan
In Germany we have DATEV, which is a company doing exacly that.

~~~
ksahin
In France we have "Bankin" and other apps, but the problem is, since banks
don't offer APIs at all, all these apps (called "Aggregators" in fintech
language) are doing web scraping to pull the user datas.

------
Slackwise
I would love something like this for personal use, so I can share my bank
account with my family and control their spending and behavior.

I mean, assuming you can give out cards linked to said account, to discern who
is using the account. That'd be incredibly useful. I used Google Wallet for
this previously, and now use Simple, but it'd be nice to not have to approve
requests and instead implement some logic to do so.

If anyone working for Simple sees this: get on this! I'd move from my main
bank account to entirely Simple just for this functionality.

~~~
malanj
That'll actually be one of the key use-cases for Root I think.

E.g. We've had people who want a card for their spouse, and then whenever one
of them spends money, it alerts the other one so that they can sync budgets.

~~~
Slackwise
That's awesome! I just wish I could use Root then, with a state-side available
bank.

------
glitchfreak
Awesome concept!! I've signed up for the beta and having worked for SBSA, I'm
proud that they're on the forefront of some this with this potential.

I'm keen to see what sort of use cases people come up with.

------
bflesch
Great idea, really like it. I really wonder why our overpaid German fintech
ecosystem is unable to produce this kind of innovation? Is it because of too
many regulations within the EU?

~~~
afarrell
> overpaid German fintech ecosystem

In what sense is the German fintech ecosystem overpaid? Don't you earn less
than the UK and US?

~~~
bflesch
Maybe "overpaid" is the wrong term. I think that VC capital allocation in
Berlin is skewed in favor of fintech investments, where most people are
setting up some part of the banking ecosystem into their own app and most of
them fail hard w/ product market fit even though they got great budgets
compared to other b2c industries like eSports etc.

------
hoektoe
AWESOME , nice to South Africans

