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I had a few problems with Mint which is why I decided to build this: 1. It wasn't available in my country and 2. I didn't want to connect my bank account, just because I wasn't comfortable with giving them that info. The API key would be awesome, but with banks being such large organisations that deal with so much data I feel like this would be almost impossible to implement with their current systems.

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I hear ya!

I work for a big bank, and I tried pushing the idea around a bit, but to no avail.

It really comes down to "business need" - the department responsible for the online services would need to be convinced that there is a desire and a benefit to providing an API key. I imagine they would see it negative for two ways - added risk by having sites/programs connect to their application, and they won't see the added benefit to customers, and vice-versa - customers wouldn't really know what to do with the key.

It would take a player like Mint to make that case - they could do branding with a major bank such that they are the first to safely share data, but then recommend products, etc.

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