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Comment by cachvico | Hacker News Reader

    Also don't get me started that I can't use an api to get my account details and statements in Canada.

Anyone know if there's any ongoing effort to this effect - i.e. to force banks to implement a common API for querying data held in their accounts?

A brief search reveals that Canada is of course missing from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_banking

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Don't be fooled by the "open banking" propaganda, we've had it in the EU for years and we're still scraping web apps like in the old days.

<Rant> I tried to get API access to my bank account and was told by my bank that Open Banking is not for physical persons. I tried to the same for my nonprofit and was told that only licensed PSD2 TPPs ("third-party providers") can use it. The national bank issues those licenses, but provides no information on what the process for obtaining one is. I called some friends and got in touch with someone at a major payment services provider, who explained that to get their license, the national bank insisted on them having essentially unlimited-coverege insurance - something no insusrer in the country was even willing to sell at any price. They managed to get the insurance from elsewhere in the EU and whole process cost them "six figures". Even after that, you still don't get full access to their own accounts, because the whole API is built on the idea of connecting customers with fintech apps, so there are a bunch of limitations intended for privacy and security that don't make any sense in a "I want full access to my own account" scenario. All the advice I got was "just keep scraping". How the fuck do they dare call that "open" banking?!? </Rant>

Crypto-currency was a test-run for what happens when you put a financial transaction API on the public Internet. And those servers were written by smart people with no regulatory compliance to worry about.

Cryptocurrency is so wildly different from normal money in so many ways, that any attempt to look at just the "open API" aspect of it is futile.

Or do you see any conclusions about "money APIs" that can be reasonably made from crypto?

Result is a massive ecosystem, so yes it proves the point (regulation aside).

Believable.

I wouldn't even trust the API with the numbers. The CSV and OBX published by a number of banks I used were always broken in some interesting but obvious ways. Minutes replacing months (someone mixed up %m/%M), values with cents appended twice for international transactions, unique IDs in OBX rolling over every month, and many others. Unless the same API is used for their legal reporting, I don't have a reason to expect it's better. Scraping the pages was way more reliable.

>Anyone know if there's any ongoing effort to this effect - i.e. to force banks to implement a common API for querying data held in their accounts?

Literally in the news as we speak!

https://globalnews.ca/news/10195005/canada-banking-changes-2...

What it ends up looking like, who knows.

hah! Nice. Although, $100 says we're gonna fsck it up.

Consulted in the space about 3 years ago. Regulatory powers lack tooth. Most large banks are not ready (i.e. poor security, complex backend, no scalability, etc.) and are scrambling to find solutions while begging for my time. Also, lots of discussion and jostling and fear of what might happen when it goes live. No one can truly agree on the legal framework as well so feels like much work to be done.

Was also part of the implementation phase in the UK and the regulatory powers there definitely sped things up.

Canada is working on Open Banking from what information is out there - although it will be important to confirm that the Canadian interpretation of Open Banking is the same or compatible with other nations, which in no way is guaranteed just because it's called the same thing.

Weird, is Open Banking only a thing in Turkiye? I have all my bank accounts added to my primary bank’s app, though it’s read only and I can view balances and transactions.

Going out on a limb to say ironically it's easier for the developing world to implement this stuff because they're so much less entrenched to begin with. Have also seen this in South Africa for example.

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