Show HN: How to find the best bank for your needs | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: How to find the best bank for your needs

banklist.io

50 pointsglowww47 comments

Hi everyone,

I just launched Bank List, an online banking directory to help people find the perfect bank for their needs.

It currently has 170+ banks/EMIs and it's mostly focused on individuals and businesses from Europe, but I plan on adding new regions soon.

The business model is affiliate marketing, I earn commission when someone signs up on any of these banks through my link. Maybe I will also add featured listings on the site, still need to think about this though.

I would love to receive feedback about the website and business idea in general.

Thank you

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Cool site! Thanks for sharing. Some notes...

1) There is an existing company with a (possibly too) similar name, BancList [0], which lets people invest in institutions. Notice their use of the word "banc", and the lack of the word "bank" on their website, which is to ensure they don't run afoul of

2) legal misuse of the term "bank" according to some local laws [1], which you should review as well to make sure you aren't breaking any rules in any relevant jurisdiction.

[0] https://banclist.com/

[1] https://www.dentons.com/en/insights/alerts/2015/august/18/ca...

Most of the "Banks" listed are not banks, but products offered through other banks. e.g: 'Qapital is not a bank. Banking services provided by Lincoln Savings Bank, Member FDIC and other partner banks'

That's because US regulatory regime is antiquated. Deposit insurance is a pain, payments take ages and some very old cheque rules still apply to transfers.

As much as these companies would like to be something separate, they are precluded by laws and regulations.

That’s what they said about crypto…

All crypto startups use established banks to transfer and hold USD. I don't know of a single all crypto bank in US.

A lot of companies that brand themselves as a "bank" are some regional bank underneath.

(I literally work in the payments industry, for reference)

Ex: One Financial states

> ONE card is issued by Coastal Community Bank

On a glance I'd guess many of the service providers listed in EU are also not proper banks.

The site looks good, it's clean and I like the functionality, but the fact that you only list online/neo banks (presumably because they have an affiliate program, while (some) traditional banks may not) means it's an incomplete and biased selection to begin with. For me, because of that, I'm afraid it's a pass.

Thank you for the feedback. Actually, I decided to start with neobanks for different reasons: 1. It is significantly easier to collect information about neobanks than it is about traditional banks. Specially here in Europe, where there are so many languages. 2. Because of my business field, I already have knowledge and experience researching online banks and I have / have had accounts in many of the banks listed.

Out of the 170+ banks listed, only 3 of them have an affiliate link. My intention at this moment is testing the idea, so I found neobanks the easiest way to get started. Now that I see there is a big demand for traditional banks to be listed on the platform, I will definitely do so!

Please retitle to: “Find the Best Bank for Your Buck”

;)

(For English learners: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang_for_the_buck)

A big challenge for US banks is finding the banks that have the right transaction download tech. I forget the term, but the thing that allows you to download your transactions directly into your banking software without having to jump through a bunch of hoops.

OFX. Horrible that it is so hard. Guess they all want you to use Mint. I don't want that. I just want to run an application on my machine which periodically fetches the data.

If I want it in the cloud I'll run my own instance. But I don't want a third party controlling all of that data.

When I was looking at GnuCash, I found a website that purported to list the US banks that had OFX support. It was just one guy maintaining it and it sounded exhausting, he eventually gave up. But it's like the one thing that would encourage me to switch around all my banks and credit cards, if I could be sure they supported that.

Sounds like integration with Plaid or one of their competitors.

But from personal experience, even if a bank is listed on their sites, it doesn't mean that the integration actually works.

This is amazing. I've been using Dukascopy and Wise, but good to see more options, for my country. Just curious, did you use LLMs to parse and organize all those information? Also, how did you source the EMIs for this list?

> It currently has 170+ banks/EMIs and it's mostly focused on individuals and businesses from Europe

Europe and US/Canda have plenty of options, would love to see more EMIs for other regions. Still a great list.

Why have I never heard of any of these? I'd figure I'd see at least a couple of brick and mortar institutions. Am I missing something major here?

Looking at Swiss banks it is not listing either Credit Suisse (okay, it's zombie currently, I give you that), nor UBS. The list seems to have some holes... actually I see only a very few new Swiss fintechs listed, and nothing else, none of the big or mid-size "brick-and-mortar" banks.

Or you mean, if there is no commission, then it won't get on the site either? In this case I'm not a fan of the business/portal idea.

I decided to start with online banks but traditional banks will be added soon too

I see... generally I like seeing the list of providers, and to compare them easily, though I don't know if I would actually use the site as a private person. Changing bank as a private person is quite a hassle (and banks know this... but I digress).

Though I think if I was a (small) business owner I would definitely try to fish around...

Neobanks are honestly never the best bank. They may be the best current account in which you shouldn't keep more than a few hundreds, or the best way to exchange currency, but they are not good banks.

There are countless stories of people getting their money frozen on all of those and spending years trying to recover it.

I've been using USAA bank for more than 20 years, it has worked great for me.

Maybe you mean challenger or startup banks.

Online banks have existed for nearly 25 years.

Edited to "neobanks", which should be clearer.

What's the regulatory difference between neobanks and traditional banks that allows for this abuse?

Well you'll never be able to speak to an actual person at a neobank.

They're also not really banks but rather frontends built on top of a bank that provides them the banking services they need. But they still manage the accounts. So they will throw the ball at each other if you have issues, and will always blame it on their partner.

I'm a big fan of boring local credit unions

This is interesting, but I don't see any of the major banks... Only online / brands that seem new or I've never heard of.

People might get scared off if they don't see the big names they are used to IMO.

Other than that, UX looks neat. Would be nice to be able to type in the country search boxes.

Thank you for the feedback. I wanted to focus on online banks in the beginning, but I will add more "traditional" banks too

1min review: As I wasn't sure if they had local banks that interest me and I saw some currencies listed on the ones on the front page I searched for EUR and only got one result, so it only checks the name.

So filtering by country or at least by currency would be my number one feature request. Yes, I saw the filter, but typing GER brings me to Gabon, Ecuador, Reunion.

Love it! Hopefully you can get a referral fee from the banks!

Btw, I’m Canada, we have a unique Money transfer system called “bill pay” (it probably has an official name but that’s what everyone calls it). I’d love for you to add more filters for whether banks support features like this and others.

Another for me is Canada-based USD accounts that accept EFT transfers.

Very neat! This is useful in countries like Cyprus, where the local banks suck and many international banks don't want to have you as a customer.

Last I heard Wise & Revolut don't onboard any cypriot businesses anymore, so maybe you want to adjust your availability in that regard. Juni is a good solution though.

I am actually looking for a second bank account right now. I want a bank that offers a checking account and a high-interest savings account. This page would have been really helpful if I could have sorted by APY. AFAIK that would also require specifying the US state though and likely changes frequently.

You can actually sort by APY (interest), but as I mentioned, most of the banks are EU focused, so you won't find many options for the US. I'm planning to add US banks soon.

Perhaps consider Fidelity. Cash management account, free/without fees. ATM fees reimbursed, free wires in and out. Funds could be kept in SPAXX [1] in that account.

Not investing advice.

[1] https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/summary/31617... (Fidelity Government Money Market Fund)

I like that it allows me to pick my country from the list but I'm confused by the results, they seem to completely ignore the country filter? I'd prefer an empty result set (instead of a list of banks that don't match my search query).

If you are using the filter "My Location", it will show banks that accept clients from your country. If you use "Bank Location" instead, it will show banks that are based in that country.

I think it is really important to clearly indicate what sort of license the service is operating under, i.e. is it credit institution, e-money institution, payment institution, or something else?

I'm curious why the complete exclusion of Credit Unions?

It would be helpful to select bank location to be EU rather than one of its constituent countries since that could be an option for someone in an EU country.

How can my company (Levro) get on this list? We're a neobank geared towards international companies. Please feel free to email nathan at levro.com

Thanks! :)

Did a search for cannabis -- since banking for that industry is challenging -- and got no results. I think that would be cool.

Unusable on Android/Firefox. Can't see the whole layout, can't confirm the filters. Breaks the back button.

serendipity at it's finest - been trying to find the best bank for a holding co literally during today

I picked location US and tried to find popular locations like Panama, Singapore, Bahamas, UAE(Dubai). Nothing came up. Are there any good filters to pick for offshore from US banking? Or something like "exclude my current location from list."

Most of the banks listed are focused on European customers, but I will add US soon too!

Nice. Yeah it'd also be cool to easily see which European banks accept offshore US customers. It can be a real struggle finding offshore banks that don't mind dealing with FATCA for low value accounts.

Definitely. Thanks for the feedback!

It recommended Monzo. I visited the site

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Sorry but I want a bank, not something that advertises at me.

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