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A comment on Plaid paid people $500 for their employer payroll logins. Parent comment

Re:Plaid paid people $500 for their employer payroll logins by tgsovlerkhgsel on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @03:28AM (#27127676)
PSD2 seems like a total disaster to me.

From my understanding, banks are required to provide an API. Not a specific one - any API. Which means each bank has a different one and you need yet another rent seeker that aggregates those APIs.

That's on top of requiring specific, often outdated security mechanisms, so now every time I want to pay something with a credit card I have to do extra authentication, >1 GB of my phone's memory is filled just with bank auth apps (again, each bank has their own).

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Re:Plaid paid people $500 for their employer payroll logins by lmm on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @03:32AM (#27127691)
> you need yet another rent seeker that aggregates those APIs.

If anyone can implement such an aggregator, market competition should drive the cost of that close to zero soon enough.

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Re:Plaid paid people $500 for their employer payroll logins by scrollaway on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @05:56AM (#27128534)
And indeed it is. Nordigen's product for example is free; they make money on upselling an optional product on top.

https://nordigen.com/

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Re:Plaid paid people $500 for their employer payroll logins by tgsovlerkhgsel on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @01:10PM (#27132641)
Since the aggregator will process sensitive data, you need a lot of audits etc.

If you'd like to use the API to access your own account using open source software, good luck (unless you find an aggregator that is certified and allows you to access your own account through them).

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Re:Plaid paid people $500 for their employer payroll logins by cookguyruffles on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @04:13AM (#27127957)
> Not a specific one - any API

Defining this is a job for industry bodies and suchlike, as is keeping it current. Lest we forget jokes like the 2020 Brexit agreement containing references to Netscape Navigator 4.0

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Re:Plaid paid people $500 for their employer payroll logins by tgsovlerkhgsel on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @01:09PM (#27132626)
Having a rule that banks need to agree on one and then implement it would be fine. What is not fine is allowing each bank to come up with their own, especially as banks have no interest of making usage of their API easy.
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