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Comment by lukebennett | Hacker News Reader

> I think we need to force all financial companies to have a modern API and OAuth available for everyone via legislation.

That already exists[0] in the UK

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

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It's been a little while since I've looked into the Open Banking API stuff - how easy is it to use this API as a consumer? Or do I have to create a business and apply for a license in order to use it?

Open Banking is in some ways misnamed - you can't as an end-user just do OAuth and get a data feed out of your account, you'll have to go via a third party who've jumped through all the hoops.

Got it! That's what I thought (feared). I wonder if there are ever plans to open it up to general use, or if it would be easy as an end user to jump said hoops.

I wonder if there are any open source third parties?

I don't know about open source ones, but I did find Enable Banking (https://old.reddit.com/r/eupersonalfinance/comments/k4ny3j/f...) offering free access to your own accounts. I don't know if "offer" still stands, the FAQ is not very explicit on it (it only talks about testing, https://enablebanking.com/docs/faq/#can-i-test-the-api-befor... & https://enablebanking.com/docs/api/linked-accounts/).

I tried it, but I couldn't get things working sandbox environment so I ended up giving up and just do manual exports.

GoCardless has an API that’s connected to 2.3k banks in Europe and UK.

Free to use (up to a limit). Not open source though.

Link: https://gocardless.com/bank-account-data/

[I work at GoCardless]

Europe has a shot too but what i’ve found is that the API’s are often so clunky and bad that they might as well not exist

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