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Comment by ultra_nick | Hacker News Reader

I wish banks had API tokens, so that people didn't have to exchange their passwords for financial services.

From https://help.mint.com/Accounts-and-Transactions/939542541/Wh...

> Mint now signs in to select banks using OAuth (open standard for authentication). ... Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Capital One

The UK has implemented Open Banking [1] and PSD2 directive since late 2018.

It allows apps to interconnect and pull data - I can use a single banking app to check balances across all my accounts.

[1] https://www.openbanking.org.uk

PSD2 is EU-wide. (I hope the UK doesn't roll it back!)

Now if 'open' part of PSD2 open banking actually meant that I could access my own bank account api, that would be great :).

Unfortunately you need to be acredited to be able to get access to banks APIs and in order to get acredited there are certain requirements such as needing to be a legal entity. Alas, no dice for the enthusiasts.

Could enthusiasts not form a non profit entity to receive accreditation and delegate access?

There are other, such as capital, cash flow and licensing requirements.... As far as I can tell.

I was very disappointed when I found this out too. Fail.

There will probably be resellers offering api access to our own data (I think that's the deal with tokens.io) so... classic lobbiest produced walled garden to limit free enterprise and competition.

Me too. But I doubt it will ever happen without regulation.

The only development in this space that I'm aware of is from a South African company called root. You can run custom code before/after transactions through their credit card. https://root.co.za/card

And don't forget the middlemen that monetize your de-identified data in exchange for providing the service :)

A few US banks (e.g. Capital One) provide a separate password for API access.

Unfortunately, it's rare.

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