Mint.com connects to your bank account, credit card account, etc, and downloads your data. How do they do that? Do they need any special authorization from the banks or it's an open API? How about security? Can you please explain their back-end system?
The same question applies to Blippy and inDinero. Anyone know what these guys are doing on the back end to get the transaction data?
The typical question is, why do Mint and inDinero use Yodlee instead of building the solution out themselves?
1) Security Liability. No startup should ever have to deal with the problems that go with storing passwords to financial accounts. Yodlee is in the business of security, they have direct feeds with major banks, making it much easier (and safer) to just integrate with them.
2) Mass quantity of banks. Screen scraping from so many banks is a pain in the *. It isn't standard either -- compare the bank website of Wells Fargo to that of a local credit union that asks 5 security questions upon login. In short, it's a brutal nightmare.
3) None of our businesses are in the business of screen-scraping. If Mint had to spend the first year of business integrating with banks, they wouldn't be successful. And even once the integrations are done, you have to maintain them in the event that the bank changes their login page or interface. In short, it's not worth any startup's time to do manual screen scraping themselves.
Would be happy to discuss further if you DM me.