Getting a new banking charter in the US is hard, but it's straightforward to be a challenger bank in the UK. Jarvis moved (back) to London from SF to start Griffin.
The banks in the US that have APIs tend to focus on large fintech partnerships, so even simple APIs will be expensive compared to a regular bank account. Grasshopper Bank in the US (for example) is one of the few that will do APIs on top of regular commercial bank accounts.
(I work at Treasury Prime, which powers many US banks that do APIs.)
It’s hard in the UK too! Just not “infeasible” hard. (Plus, it’s easier to finance as you don’t have those pesky Bank Holding Company Act regs dinging your investors)
Do you mean Neobanks that generally attach to existing banks through partnerships? The OCC nearly stopped granting de novo banking charters since 2008: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47014 (see Figure 1 on page 21)
Nah, real banks, but I did some looking and it seems they have state charters rather than national ones from the OCC. What the implications of that would be are rather unclear to me, other than that state banks are regulated by both the state and the FDIC, and national banks are regulated by the OCC.
The alternative everyone brings up is FedNow - slightly more expensive, but it works quickly and operates 24/7. The problem is that FedNow is a Real Time Payment system. Everyone in banking knows that Real Time payments equals Real Time Fraud.
Real-time payment systems are common across the world and have been for well over a decade. It poses new challenges but usually you will not consider the fraud checks (AML or just standard TMS) outside the scope of that timeline.
For example - instructing a payment to a “real time scheme” or even Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) does not mean you get it within that time period but rather it can be submitted and received.
For example if you send 100$ to a friend at another bank, you will submit the instruction, the bank will then screen it against an TMS/AML system, then once that passes 1 submit the instruction. If this time is say 10pm, you will be instructed first thing next day when the scheme opens again. In RTGS or similar real time systems, you get settlement within a shorter time period (like say a few mins to hours) meaning the next at someone will have it (pending receiving banks TMS/AML checks)
The real issue with this in the US is that they do not have a widespread account name confirmation service that is rolled out for all so it will be hard to do real-time “Confirmation of Payee” which is something that is relatively normal in other countries.
This is an oversimplification of most the steps but as a consumer, it will be a big benefit to speeding up the whole system as private networks like Venmo or Cashapp do the exact same thing (well to a lesser degree) but those services are built into the schemes themselves.
Are real time payments so bad? Australia has them (New Payments Platform, https://www.rba.gov.au/payments-and-infrastructure/new-payme...) and I've not heard anything about mass fraud on it (but possibly regular people wouldn't anyway, since it would likely be kept hush hush).
Treasury Prime is transforming banking for the 21st Century. We partner with banks to build the technology to enable this new wave of fintech startups. Through simple, unified APIs, we are modernizing the economy.
All my exams (but one) were take home with well understand rules of engagement. The one exam that wasn't take hime was a visiting professor who made us take the exam at the same time in our normal meeting room and then the left the room for 3 hours. I don't think any of us cared that it was in that particular room, but it was weird to all take the test at 2pm.
Treasury Prime is transforming banking for the 21st Century. We partner with banks to build the technology to enable this new wave of fintech startups. Through simple, unified APIs, we are modernizing the economy.
To learn more about who we are, our culture, and whether this is the right place for you, read our careers page https://treasuryprime.com/careers/
We are growing rapidly and have many open roles, including:
We're growing, hiring, and have enough runway for many years!
Treasury Prime is transforming banking for the 21st Century. We partner with banks to build the technology to enable this new wave of fintech startups. Through simple, unified APIs, we are modernizing the economy.
To learn more about who we are, our engineering culture, and whether this is the right place for you, read our Key Values profile: https://www.keyvalues.com/treasury-prime
We're growing, hiring, and have enough runway for many years!
Treasury Prime is transforming banking for the 21st Century. We partner with banks to build the technology to enable this new wave of fintech startups. Through simple, unified APIs, we are modernizing the economy.
To learn more about who we are, our engineering culture, and whether this is the right place for you, read our Key Values profile: https://www.keyvalues.com/treasury-prime
I would like to recommend that after reading PG's On Lisp, that you also consider Doug Hoyt's Let Over Lambda. Both are really great books for advanced study.
The banks in the US that have APIs tend to focus on large fintech partnerships, so even simple APIs will be expensive compared to a regular bank account. Grasshopper Bank in the US (for example) is one of the few that will do APIs on top of regular commercial bank accounts.
(I work at Treasury Prime, which powers many US banks that do APIs.)