> True innovation would be more control over your money. For example, you could have a bank account with $100 in it, and you allocate dollars $0-50 to be "online" money. This can mean different things, but for the sake of example let's say that means that you can go to https://bank.com/user/endisneigh and if I give you a special code that I create you can take an amount of money directly from my bank account, specified by the code. No need to use something like stripe.

This is a thing in the Netherlands, between iDeal / Tikkie / and bank transfers. iDeal is used for payments online, it depends a tiny bit on your bank but you get a QR code and you scan it, it then does a direct bank payment from your bank to their account.

Tikkie is similar but is p2p. I can create a link or a QR code and send it to people. They can then use the link or QR code and send me money. Alternatively you can just use my account number (an IBAN printed on the card) and just transfer money.

Monzo offers a similar thing, where you can generate a link to send someone to request money. They also have a feature where you can discover nearby users and send money that way. I've found it to be very useful for splitting bills when out with colleagues etc

But Monzo isn’t a thing that 99% of the country has access too. Tikkie and iDeal are. Every mainstream bank here supports them and are part of the organisations that manage them. Well technically tikkie is ABN AMRO but it is built on the same underlying infra so it works for all the mainstream banks.

> between iDeal / Tikkie / and bank transfers

These things are usually cartels between the local entrenched banks, and not the sort of innovation GP meant.

The idea is the existence of urls such as paynow://any-bank-at-all.com/user/endisneigh

No third party should exist.

See also https://medium.com/@mariusandreiana/open-letter-to-banks-ple...

> Tikkie is similar but is p2p. I can create a link or a QR code and send it to people. They can then use the link or QR code and send me money.

Isn't that just PayPal/Venmo?

The difference is it just uses bank accounts, instantly. You don't have to wait 3 days to get the money, or remember to regularly withdraw money from the app (then wait 3 days for it to arrive).

Venmo has been next day for me for years (which OP mentions in the article)

Tikkie, iDeal, and IBAN transfers (within the country) are essentially instant. Additionally they are universally supported by all mainstream banks.

It's operated by the banks themselves, rather than a third party.

> No need to use something like stripe.

Why wouldn't you consider using a third party (no idea if Stripe can actually do the example described) as true innovation in this space? With a third party layer, banks don't need to reinvent the wheel.

> Got a deposit via Venmo? It goes to X. From your work? Goes to Y.

FWIW, this sounds analogous (not exactly like) N26's closed/semi-closed digital wallets[1]. I guess if there's a use case for the example you proposed, it's not a huge leap to go from here.

Alas, I'm a very basic bank customer so I can't vouch for how good this feature is right now.

[1] https://n26.com/en-eu/digital-wallet

Third parties are true innovation for sure, but the specific examples cited in the article weren't necessarily innovative IMHO.

Crypto, (and I'm really not a fan) is at least doing some objectively innovative stuff. However it's not really linked with traditional fiat so isn't applicable broadly.

> With a third party layer, banks don't need to reinvent the wheel.

With a government mandated transfer method, nobody needs to, and all banks are interoperable.

I personally really like my bank transfers between any bank in the Netherlands being near instant.

Japan has had this since the late 1970s/early 80s.

Real time settlement isn't really an innovation. Its just something the banks fight to protect their float.

> FWIW, this sounds analogous (not exactly like) N26's closed/semi-closed digital wallets[1].

Similar, but with the vital difference that it doesn't depend on Apple, Google, Samsung and PayPal to continue working. Not to mention the trust that they will keep your best interest at heart when making future decisions.

Ownership of something that is valuable should remain in your control, not some 3rd party.

As far as I can tell, N26's "digital wallet" is just N26 itself. It's a bank account with a debit card, except they can't call it a bank account because of reasons, so they call it a digital wallet. It's nothing special, and I don't see how it lets you route based on sender.

It is incredible how simple it would be for banks to allow you to create an unlimited number of "accounts" (they are just yet another row on their database, after all), and yet how few banks actually allow you to do that without paying ridiculous amounts of fees.

> simple […] unlimited

I like how just explaining your concept makes it seems almost impossible in one word.

Otherwise, from a bank perspective having a set of legal obligations for each account it handles feels like a nightmare. If you split your 10 billions into an infinitiy of smaller 1000s accounts, is it supposed to guarantee all of them if it goes under ? Does it report and audit each single account etc.

If these “accounts” are just a virtual partition of your money and all follow the same rule, why wouldn’t you just deal with them as separate entities in your excel sheets and let the bank have it as it is now ? If you have a clear business use (e.g. those are “wallets” for your customers) there are already banking entities providing these services, it’s a matter of paying them enough to work with you.

For non business accounts there are already clear cases where you would create new accounts (money that effectively needs to be under a separate ownership, or bound to a specific legislation, rule or currency), so it’s not like there currently is a limit on account creation, the friction added to create one is actually protecting the system from abuse.

In legacy finance, when you pay someone with a check or wire, they get your account number and from then on can debit more from your account anytime they want, restrained only because you can dispute it after the fact. The obvious, reasonable way to fix this is to create a new ID number for each payment. We have computers now. The friction you like here is doing the opposite of protecting the customer from abuse.

(I think I've read about some banks offering this as a special feature.)

> and from then on can debit more from your account anytime they want, restrained only because you can dispute it after the fact.

They can, in the same sense that people can take stuff from your front yard if they feel like it.

You can’t do this in any country that I know of. I need to explicitly allow people to debit money from my account.

You can do this in the US. ACH only requires the numbers (account + routing) that are visible on every check we write.

Yes but if you are caught doing unauthorized ACH transfers it's not going to be good for you.

In the case of monthly bills and related things, you authorize them once. Don't know what that looks like at the backend and what controls there are but utility companies and the like can absolutely debit money on an ongoing basis.

My bank offers this by giving you virtual accounts (called pots). They are, like you say, just partitions of the same account, but it is useful to have them in the bank as opposed to in a spreadsheet. Bills only come out of the bills pot, savings are fenced off from outgoings etc.

Salary gets automatically sorted into the pots when received.

I love how people, usually on the outside, think everything would be simple. The parent comment reminded me of the "I just learned about Bitcoin and I'm here to fix it."

The Dutch Bunq bank has described itself as a bunch of nerds with a banking license. Their plans include a large number of accounts, physical cards that can be dynamically coupled to any of them, an API, zapier integration, among many other non-traditional features. https://www.bunq.com/benefits

Their feature list certainly looks impressive, it might just be the bank I was looking for.

One thing I can't quickly glean from their pages is: can I get proper API access to my account if I'm just an individual user, with no exorbitant price hike, requirements to be a large business, or to enter into an additional business relationship with the bank?

The litmus test I have for the dream bank I'm looking for: can I have a normal account and get an API endpoint, to which I could point a script and fetch my balance and transaction history? Without being forced to go through a browser to authenticate on each request, or any other kind of interactivity?

I think that your litmus scenario should be doable with all EU banks, for PSD2 compliance.

The Bunq API allows you to do a lot more than that though. https://www.bunq.com/api

> I think that your litmus scenario should be doable with all EU banks, for PSD2 compliance.

It isn't, though.

This is my big disappointment with PSD2: it's an interoperability law for businesses, focused on enabling service providers. It doesn't help individuals directly.

PSD2 is why I can view all my accounts from different banks any one of the bank's webapp. PSD2 is why I can pay some third-party service to give me a fancy budgeting dashboard[0]. Why, were I running a nontrivial business, I could do some banking using invoicing software.

But I don't want that. They all do a shit job at this[1]. I can do better - I just need an API endpoint, preferably one that can do read-only operations and internal transfers with preauthenticated token, so I can automate most of my banking away. So my problem with PSD2 is that it didn't compel banks to give such APIs to individuals. And since it didn't, they mostly don't.

--

[0] - I could do that before PSD2, but back then, it usually involved giving them access in violation of the bank's TOS, and trusting the service won't just steal all my money.

[1] - That's not because they're bad technically, but because we have conflicting interest. The banks want me to do everything through their webapp and mobile app, because they want to upsell me more financial products. Budgeting services want me to use their UI, because this justifies subscription costs and also gives them further opportunities to surveil and monetize me. Meanwhile, all I want is to never see their inconvenient and bloated UIs. I want to run my own reports, my own analyses, my own stupid "account balance" widget, that requires no login, zero clicks, combines all accounts from all banks, and shows no advertising.

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...

A bank account object is tied to legal and reglatory stipulations though, as well as separate insurance and other risk mitigation policies.

It's not just a matter simply of inserting rows in a table - there is overhead and other matters to consider.

Capital One actually allows you to open several checking accounts with no additional fees. I use them as separate “buckets”.

those are typically sub accounts - not full accounts.

Depending on the bank regulator there may need to be some equity behind the accounts.

I have been dying for this. Currently I use privacy.com and their spending limits to get the most basic of functionality. I would my bank to provide an API and make this type of control and other information available. Maybe I could really dream and it would be standardized across banks.

We're building retail accounts with exposed APIs. I encourage you to send me an email (check profile) if that's something you're interested in.

Wise lets you access your account and money with API-s. You can create a personal token (and webhooks if you want) at https://wise.com/settings and you're off to the races. Api docs are at https://api-docs.wise.com

Disclaimer: I work on Wise. (We're hiring: https://wise.jobs)

Yeah I wish my credit union had more controls. I appreciate being able to set transaction limits and GPS-limited transactions, but I want daily limits and also a transaction timer. For example, I don't want more than one transaction in a single five minute period. That would eliminate all instances of accidental double-charging.

You still sometimes get transactions and fees within seconds of each other you - i.e. I had an ATM charge me the amount of cash withdrawn once and then the fee as a separate transaction.

I get that you want to stop identical transactions within 5 minutes of each other, but I have a feeling there may already be stopgaps in place for something that simple.

There aren't. I recently had to get cash back from a Wendy's after they triple-charged me in the drive-through.

I’d like to have new charges queue up like the Hey email screener for me to approve or deny.

Hacker news has a poor track record for high-ranked comments being able to correctly identify inflation though. Pretty much every iPhone was identified as a marginal improvement until people gave up claiming that in the face of overwhelming technical and market success.

New things that have never been done before are innovative. It may not knock anyone's socks off, but innovation is happening.

I, personally, would love programmable banking but, well, I'm a programmer. Large swaths of people don't remotely want to learn to program, despite the ability to.

> The future is programmable money. That's innovation IMHO.

What you've described can be done today with smart contracts on a number of blockchains.

It can also be done without those things, using code and financial APIs.

I assumed APIs were ruled out when endisneigh said "No need to use something like stripe."

Are there really publicly accessible APIs I use to deploy that idea today?

You can always sacrifice speed for security. I like this design which was used to manage bitcoin: http://trilema.com/2013/mpex-tech-stuff/. Blockchain is a way of creating distributed ledgers. The rest is ideology. If you are making a publicly accessible API you can chose how to implement it. Regulations were applied to digital cash but given more run room with crypto.

It seems like Chime, Rho and a few others from the article are built on said APIs.

Paysera out of lithuania. Mr Tango. there are a few

Sometimes I'm baffled how basic functionality is considered innovation in other places. Where I live most banks allow turning online payments on and off, and you can issue a virtual card for your account and then set any limits on it. Stripe is barely used because business use their bank's acquiring and some of them allow logging in and saving payment details. Some banks have automatisation, but AFAIK it's not popular. For example, suggestions and quick buttons to do repeated patterns (like transfer X amount from my paycheck to savings account). There's even "round my purchases up and use extra to buy ETF" feature. All these things are made inside the banks and don't require fancy technology. I think western engineers in finance are busy trading stocks rather than coding some basic user interactions.

> if I give you a special code that I create you can take an amount of money directly from my bank account, specified by the code. No need to use something like stripe.

You just described OpenBanking in the UK, SEPA in the EU and NPI in India.

"if I give you a special code" sounds similar to Blik system in Poland - sender generates 6 digit code valid for 120 sec, gives it to donor (shop, person, atm) and the founds are transfered with additional approval by sender. This way you can make payment via non-trustworthy places such as Internet coffies or withdraw money in atm without compromising chip/pin on card. Additionally, if you connect you phone to blik, you are able to receive instant blik money transfers by using phone number as destination. Really handy!

Free banking is a lie.

Banks are making money by taxing every transaction you make with your credit card. People would be shocked how much they are paying the bank for the convenience if they were presented with accumulated, monthly payments.

This is all very cleverly architected so that you, the consumer, don't have to explicitly pay for anything.

It makes sense for banks to offer "free" checking account and "free" credit cards. They don't want you to be concerned because they earn so much more on interchange fees.

True, in the US. In quite a few countries most people use national debit cards with transaction processing fees in the 1 cent range, and in EU credit card interchange fees are capped by law to something like 0.3%. such low fees also eliminate anticompetitive credit card cashback offers which are so common in the US.

> also eliminate anticompetitive credit card cashback offers

I've heard a lot about why they're bad but not that they're anti-competitive. In what ways are they?

It's basically a bribe for customers to use credit cards, forcing businesses to pay huge transaction fees. So the businesses have to raise their prices to cover those fees, which acts like a tax on both the business and consumers, especially those using alternative payment methods. And even the people using cashback credit cards don't win anything, they get their 1% back from 3% higher prices.

> give you a special code that I create you can take an amount of money directly from my bank account, specified by the code. No need to use something like stripe.

> give you a special code that I create you can take an amount of money directly from my bank account, specified by the code. No need to use something like stripe.

That is a check, but digital.

The 'allowing someone to take money from my account' mentality in the US has always struck me as weird framing and prone to abuse/trust issues.

In Australia, I initiate all of my payments on my side to the target account/company/etc. I am giving the money to you, not 'authorising you to take it' from my account. Having someone's bank account details only allows you to pay them, not request payments from them.

Relative to what the government/banks are doing, the cryptosphere is doing so much better.

It's so strange how much dislike HN has for crypto and "web3" more broadly, despite being so evidently ignorant of it here. They're literally circling around what has been going on for years in DeFi(and really exploding in activity right now as we speak). Their loss I guess.

Seeing the same people who argue against crypto talk about how cool programmable money is just seems crazy.

On a side note, I think a lot of comments on HN are well-articulated rubbish. I send threads of cool-looking technical discussions to close friends who research the area and usually it turns out they’re clueless and just speaking with authority. I take everything with so much more salt now than I did a few months ago.

I kinda agree and disagree I suppose.

I lived in USA in the 90's and then moved to Canada. Banking system here seemed lightyears ahead of American in terms of functionality, user-friendliness, technology. And it seemed to endure until relatively recently. By all accounts, Canada is behind truly innovative places.

So, though it's late to the game, a lot of those things are still "innovation", to USA, late-trickling as they may be.

And banking in Canada is behind many places. Lithuania, Estonia would be examples.

I lived in Finland in early 90s - they had already gotten rid of cheques. Russia with Qiwi kiosks is quite innovative.

Why did banks want to get rid of cheques and why did they stay? The settlement was fast near the end with imaging etc. Basically Free. What did we get? email transfer? fuck I worked on building that in 2000. Can't believe it is still there with shitty limits for businesses.

Innovation is inventing something new; imitating others and catching up with the rest of the world a decade late is not it.

So it’s etherium?

It’s all wrapping my electrons in a database in firewall rules. The database outputs are pegged to one social meme or another?

It's spelt Ethereum

You missed, disruptive and saleable.

> True innovation would be more control over your money.

you might like http://mikorizal.org and http://holochain.org

> The future is programmable money. That's innovation IMHO.

You think? I can't imagine a situation in which programmable money would be an advantage.

I have to respectfully disagree that this isn't innovation. I would very strongly argue that innovation is doing something that the established players believe to be impossible.

From the article: >>The financial industry thought, for many years, that the customers added or retained by these improvements would be disproportionately expensive to service and low-revenue. Cash App has experimentally disproven that.

The fact that there are players in the financial field doing what the incumbents wouldn't and being profitable doing it is a pretty good indicator that innovation is happening in the industry.

>>True innovation would be more control over your money.

I won't argue that a higher bar might be for you to have more control over your money. But the article very much addresses this very thing. The innovation you may be missing, is that there are many unbanked individuals in the US (>5% based on a quick search), and this article claims this demographic is finding it easier to become banked, with less predation. This is probably a much greater increase in their control over their money than the marginal increase programmable money is going to have for your control.

Most of the things in the article were possible in the 2000s via credit unions, just not banks in the USA. I honestly don't think it's innovation in any meaningful sense. That's to say nothing about the rest of the world.

Alliant for example has had same-day ACH for a while. Many credit unions also removed the ability to overdraft by default (technically this was always possible with a bank if you called).