ctdean

Getting a new banking charter in the US is hard, but it's straightforward to be a challenger bank in the UK. Jarvis moved (back) to London from SF to start Griffin.

The banks in the US that have APIs tend to focus on large fintech partnerships, so even simple APIs will be expensive compared to a regular bank account. Grasshopper Bank in the US (for example) is one of the few that will do APIs on top of regular commercial bank accounts.

(I work at Treasury Prime, which powers many US banks that do APIs.)

They are good, it's just that 90% of the US banks are not ready for this today.

The alternative everyone brings up is FedNow - slightly more expensive, but it works quickly and operates 24/7. The problem is that FedNow is a Real Time Payment system. Everyone in banking knows that Real Time payments equals Real Time Fraud.

Is this just the downstream effect of Visa’s decoupled debit rules ? https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/about-visa/visa-rules...

I know this is not allowed in the USA.

Treasury Prime (YC W18) | San Francisco, CA | Remote | https://treasuryprime.com

Treasury Prime is transforming banking for the 21st Century. We partner with banks to build the technology to enable this new wave of fintech startups. Through simple, unified APIs, we are modernizing the economy.

To learn more about who we are, our product culture, and whether this is the right place for you, read https://www.treasuryprime.com/careers

Here are some of our open roles:

- Director of Product: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/treasuryprime/50c74820-7361-413a-b0...

- Backend Software Engineer: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/treasuryprime/6831bfe2-9a0a-4bda-83...

- Senior/Staff Software Engineer: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/treasuryprime/1531a8ad-d030-4087-96...

- Senior Frontend Software Engineer: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/treasuryprime/fddbfdbf-3c48-490b-91...

Tech Stack: Clojure, React, Postgres, AWS, Git

All my exams (but one) were take home with well understand rules of engagement. The one exam that wasn't take hime was a visiting professor who made us take the exam at the same time in our normal meeting room and then the left the room for 3 hours. I don't think any of us cared that it was in that particular room, but it was weird to all take the test at 2pm.

A version of the paper here https://songma.github.io/files/hm_video.pdf

I really question this data sample.

Treasury Prime (YC W18) | San Francisco, CA | Onsite / Remote | https://treasuryprime.com

Treasury Prime is transforming banking for the 21st Century. We partner with banks to build the technology to enable this new wave of fintech startups. Through simple, unified APIs, we are modernizing the economy.

To learn more about who we are, our culture, and whether this is the right place for you, read our careers page https://treasuryprime.com/careers/

We are growing rapidly and have many open roles, including:

- Developer Relations Lead: https://treasuryprime.com/jobs/developer_relations_lead/

- Technical Program Manager: https://treasuryprime.com/jobs/program_manager/

- Senior Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/jobs/senior_software_engineer/

- Clojure Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/jobs/clojure_software_engineer/

Treasury Prime (YC W18) | San Francisco, CA | Onsite | https://treasuryprime.com

We're growing, hiring, and have enough runway for many years!

Treasury Prime is transforming banking for the 21st Century. We partner with banks to build the technology to enable this new wave of fintech startups. Through simple, unified APIs, we are modernizing the economy.

To learn more about who we are, our engineering culture, and whether this is the right place for you, read our Key Values profile: https://www.keyvalues.com/treasury-prime

Here are our open roles:

- Senior Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/careers/eng/senior/

- Backend Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/jobs/backend_software_engineer

- Clojure Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/jobs/clojure_software_engineer

- Account Executive: https://treasuryprime.com/jobs/account_executive_3

Tech Stack: Clojure, React, Postgres, AWS, Git

Those links are all broken :(

Use https://treasuryprime.com/careers

Treasury Prime (YC W18) | San Francisco, CA | Onsite | https://treasuryprime.com

We're growing, hiring, and have enough runway for many years!

Treasury Prime is transforming banking for the 21st Century. We partner with banks to build the technology to enable this new wave of fintech startups. Through simple, unified APIs, we are modernizing the economy.

To learn more about who we are, our engineering culture, and whether this is the right place for you, read our Key Values profile: https://www.keyvalues.com/treasury-prime

Here are our open roles:

- Senior Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/careers/eng/senior/

- Frontend Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/careers/eng/frontend/

- Backend Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/careers/eng/backend/

Tech Stack: Clojure, React, Postgres, AWS, Git

On Lisp is the best Lisp programming book I have ever read. Both PG’s lisp books are great and you can just read those and the CL hyperspec.

On Lisp is out of print, but can be downloaded.

Treasury Prime (YC W18) | San Francisco, CA | Onsite | https://treasuryprime.com

We're growing, hiring, and have enough runway for many years!

Treasury Prime is transforming banking for the 21st Century. We partner with banks to build the technology to enable this new wave of fintech startups. Through simple, unified APIs, we are modernizing the economy.

To learn more about who we are, our engineering culture, and whether this is the right place for you, read our Key Values profile: https://www.keyvalues.com/treasury-prime

Here are our open roles:

- Senior Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/careers/eng/senior/

- Frontend Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/careers/eng/frontend/

- Backend Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/careers/eng/backend/

Tech Stack: Clojure, React, Postgres, AWS, Git

Treasury Prime (YC W18) | San Francisco, CA | Onsite | https://treasuryprime.com

Treasury Prime is transforming banking for the 21st Century. We partner with banks to build the technology to enable this new wave of fintech startups. Through simple, unified APIs, we are modernizing the economy.

To learn more about who we are, our engineering culture, and whether this is the right place for you, read our Key Values profile: https://www.keyvalues.com/treasury-prime

Here are our open roles:

- Senior Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/careers/eng/senior/

- Frontend Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/careers/eng/frontend/

- Backend Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/careers/eng/backend/

Tech Stack: Clojure, React, Postgres, AWS, Git

Treasury Prime (YC W18) | San Francisco, CA | Onsite | https://treasuryprime.com

Treasury Prime is transforming banking for the 21st Century. We partner with banks to build the technology to enable this new wave of fintech startups. Through simple, unified APIs, we are modernizing the economy.

To learn more about who we are, our engineering culture, and whether this is the right place for you, read our Key Values profile: https://www.keyvalues.com/treasury-prime

Here are our open roles:

- Senior Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/careers/eng/senior/

- Frontend Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/careers/eng/frontend/

- Backend Software Engineer: https://treasuryprime.com/careers/eng/backend/

Tech Stack: Clojure, React, Postgres, AWS, Git

Good job Brex and Radius Bank! This is a great product and a great user experience.

https://zenbusiness.com/ will create an LLC (I don't know what state) and then create a bank account if you want with Radius Bank in Boston. I've never used Zen myself, but they and Radius have been good partners.

For those interested in maximizing their interest rate on their cash holdings, I like https://www.maxmyinterest.com/ which has deals with many banks for high interest accounts. They make it very easy to move your money around to get the maximum ... uh ... return.

The fed is still living with the fear of the 2008 crash. And you still need FDIC insurance even if you have a state charter.

I talk to (about) a person a week who wants to create a new US bank. Some are pursuing a de novo charter, some are buying a bank, and some are a quasi bank on top of another bank.

The real blocker here is the Fed won't grant new charters and often won't transfer charters. I'm hoping this will change in the next few years and we can get some real competition.

(Disclosure: my job is making APIs for US Banks.)

If you get stuck at an American Banker paywall, just search on Google for the article

"Radius in Boston working with fintech firm on online business checking platform"

What's the threat model for serving a read-only, public, marketing site over http? Or is it just a general principle?

Using stunnel is a genius idea.

I work with Mike at SVB and wanted to add that we are particularly interested in remote contractors. If you are a great engineer who is also remote (US only) and also a contractor, please contact us.

Here's an indirect pointer to the data from J. Alex Halderman:

https://medium.com/@jhalderm/want-to-know-if-the-election-wa...

Pretty neat. Anyone know how this compares to the WePay offering?

$625 million in cash

It's hard to see from the outside how much innovation is stifled due to regulators - but from my position it is a substantial amount. Part of the basic problem is that the very large and very successful companies have captured their regulators and have much more freedom to innovate when they are interested. But they are usually not interested in innovating because that are already big and successful.

This is in contrast to the growing startup which is under the regulator microscope.

The UK has the idea of a "Challenger Bank" for starups in the banking industry. The US should have a similar program.

(FWIW, Zac and I have talked about this a lot.)

Article from 2011.

Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3108087

This reminds me of the discussion on the definition of "Object Oriented". It's a term of art that means a specific thing in the context of programming. [1]

"Minimum Viable Product" is also a term of art to describe a specific concept and can't really be broken down word by word. If you look at Eric Ries, Steve Blank, and Frank Robinson they have a specific meaning for MVP that matches The Macro article.

See for example [2] where Reis says "It is not necessarily the smallest product imaginable, though; it is simply the fastest way to start learning how to build a sustainable business with the minimum amount of effort."

[1] See this hilarious interchange http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HeInventedTheTerm [2] The previously mentioned http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/dropbox-minimal-viable-prod...