Ask HN: What would you do with a bank API?

* Transferring money to our clients would ideally be one uniform API request. Globally speaking, moving money around can still be complicated depending on what your business does, how much money you are transferring and the origin/destination. API's could enable a new level of communication about moving money around that could satisfy many countries needs to track/audit about money transfers while making it easier for businesses to actually do it. * Reconciliation of statements with whatever software you use. Right now, there are a lot of different formats for getting account statements. Our bank's commercial services doesn't actually provide a standard format at all. They have a CSV like TXT file that has not documentation and that only Sage Accounting can read. Brilliant! An Open API could allow us to query an account and format out in any standard format we need; or, even better, just directly hook up to our accounting software (Xero) and be done with it. * Integrations. Most integrations are giant hacks right now that simulate a browser logging in with your full access password and download statements/etc. API's could provision access to specific end-points and be revoked. It would greatly enhance security all around. * Automation. Our business pays our our customers on a weekly basis, but it would be awesome if we just checked a box "Approved" and it did all the magic of moving money around. * There are literally some things we need to call our bank to do, but are really just operations their web interface doesn't allow us to do. Ideally, an API would allow us to write our own flow to complete these same operations without bothering our bank.

Honestly, the less I have to deal with any bank with our startup the happier I am.

Startup idea: Create a tech specific credit union that exposes a straightforward API to do banking. Expand to integrations with popular online accounting software and eventually personal banking. Starting from scratch would hopefully let you build a front facing service that is modern.

In other words, it may not be as hypothetical as you think.

Build a product that allows a consumer to see all their account data in a single dashboard for review and analytics. Do analysis on spending habits, deposit trends, where are investments, how are the investments doing etc. Many people have a very hard time understanding exactly where they stand because they have multiple accounts, investments etc and it is nearly impossible to get a real time view of it.

Add to that the ability to print a financial standing document that could be used by banks and loan companies to help determine credit eligibility. I am thinking about saving time as most banks have people provide a few months of bank statements etc, and provide funds proof when getting mortgages and other loans.

- Create my own UI. Most bank UIs suck big time. Categorizing accounts, labeling them as we want etc. and yes, I don't want to do this through a third party like Mint. Also, when i see a transaction, I want better descriptions if possible. Don't show me "VISA charge" as a description, really ? I always wonder if merchants have better descrioptions and banks just make it more "cryptic" for security reasons ?

- Connect to accounting system directly. Ability to export data in csv,json etc format

- Being able to "send" money to someone easily. This exists already with banks but each one of them have clunky UIs if at all. I would build my own :)

Build a company around the product and provide change requests/maintenance services, further branding the app, etc.

However, I also trade my Wells Fargo IRA with the same system - since there's no API, this requires a very fragile Selenium-based system wherein my code opens Firefox, logs in, and navigates the correct sequence to place a stock market order. Of course, it also breaks about every three months when Wells Fargo changes their page layout.

http://www.monitise.com/americas/customers/index.php

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FinTS