Developer-Friendly Banks?

tyen writes "Any suggestions for a 'developer-friendly' bank for small businesses? The banking world is awash in data protocols that business customers who are/have coders would find useful, like BAI to extract all the raw data from an ACH or SWIFT transfer. Unfortunately, the ones I have spoken with about this access are still stuck in the Dark Ages of computing; they price the access like only big companies still have the skills to tap into these interfaces. For example, one of the four US banks with a perfect trading record this past quarter quoted us USD five figures for access to several of our accounts via BAI format. Per year. After waiving sign-up fees. Are there any banks out there that have a more progressive attitude about letting small, entrepreneurial developers work with their business accounts in a more modern, dare we say automated, way? With big businesses demanding EFT integration from small business vendors, and globalization rewarding premiums to nimble, lean businesses that automate wherever possible, automating the retrieval of this information (which is not available in consumer-oriented access like OFX) becomes an increasingly pressing issue for the small guys."

Comments

The reality of the situation.

[quietwalker]

Disclaimer: I write financial software for a living.

First, I don't see why OFX can't be used for that purpose. You could manage several hundred accounts, payroll, billpay, collections, wire transfers, funds management, etc. Not only that, it's two-way. It's not just displaying account data, it allows you to perform the actual transactions. I know of some payroll processing centers that use OFX for exactly this - either it goes to printer or it goes electronic.

Second, because there is no salable demand for individuals requesting the raw file formats for the backend transfers, those features don't exist. This is common sense - what motivation exists for a company to spend the time and effort providing a feature if there is no money attached to it.

Third, certification. There is quite a bit of hullabaloo in the banking industry about certification, and they're serious. See, there's not a lot of security in the banking world. They rely on hard connections, network separation, and effectively, trust. What they DO have though, is auditing trails. They might not be able to stop a fraudulent ATM transaction, but they can tell you every node, clearing house, third party processor or financial institution it went through. Certification is the thing that allows them to reasonably trust members in their transactional world - you can't just show up with homegrown software and hook right in.

Last, as you said, "The banking world is awash in data protocols". Lemme tell you something - the raw protocols are only about 1/20'th of what goes on. No protocol is perfect, and many systems have what you or I might consider 'undocumented features' that are handled by clever manipulation of the protocol (aka, hacks). The paper description, for example, of the ACH file format can be compressed into about 6 pages. There is a two volume set of books, each about 300 pages, of small print, so thin as to be nearly transparent pages that actually describes how those 8 pages work.

That's one protocol. There are dozens of major ones, and additional complexities when you add in feature specific cores or sinks (back end systems that banks use to store the actual data on, like those provided by MISER or Fiserv )- do you support overdraft protection, provide memo services (a hold against an account for an amount prior to it's actual processing), and if so, which of the dozen ways do you provide that information?

So in the end;
* no real financial benefit to providing that access (especially when you say you don't want to pay XD )
* no certification to provide that access
* actual software knowledge requires domain knowledge many magnitudes greater than just file formats, including per-FI non-public knowledge

last and not the least important items not discussed above;
* financial institutions are slow movers when it comes to adopting technology.
* early adopters are NEVER the small banks, and they always require a hefty ($$$$) reason to include it.

So it could be done - and probably will in the next 20 years or so - but not today. ...

as an aside,

The reason you'd be getting billed 5 figures for access is because they'd end up assigning someone to manually pull your ACH records out of each daily batch and save them to one side. Manually. They may even need to have someone actually type the new entries in (separation of networks, removable media would be disallowed - of course.)

Hillarious ...

[angel'o'sphere]

I stopped reading after like 5 insightful/interesting posts.

Note to the Article poster: SWIFT is a bank to bank network. You will never get access to it as a non bank, and if you hack into it ... prey that no one figures it.

To the others pointing out why the OP never will find what he wants:

• face it, the USA has a banking system that is not even worth considered to be a 3rd world banking system, it is far far below acceptable standards. But well, you all adapted to it and don't know anything else
• I have myself not written any paper cheque or paper advice of payment since 15 or more years
• some ppl say here in /. that it is to expensive for a bank to let small customers use electronic access. Thats wrong, the opposite is true.
• Every payment advice or any other transaction that comes in electronically does the bank cost nothing, as it can be processed automatically.
• Every paper that the bank receives needs to be processed more or less manually
• In my country, the bank account fees are between $10 and $100 per year (for a company) and that includes quite a high amount of transactions and free internet and other electronic interaction.
• private bank accounts usually cost nothing (as the banks hope you overdraw your account and pay interests)
• my sports club is using a Java Application to debit all the member fees from the member accounts every month, quarter, or year ... for free.
• one of my companies has the bank account linked to the tax accountant. All transactions on the companies bank account get logged to the book keeping system of the tax accounted ... guess what? FOR FREE

You ofc. can ignore all my "for free" claims above, as that is not for free but covert by the base yearly fees.

To the OP: try Pay Pall, they have an oen API to access them, no idea how useful that is for you or which applications exist to use it reasonable.

Regards,

angel'o'sphere

Re:What do you expect...

[rjlieb]

Tell you what... You think this is a brilliant way to make money? Open your own bank.

Really? Have you done it? Can you point me to somebody who's done it?

I've been directly involved in the creation of two banks in my career and indirectly involved in a half-dozen more. Detail vary, but you generally need to raise less than $10 million. You also need a lot of patience. New banks take years to start making money.