HACKER Q&A
📣 xfactor973

Why don't banks have API tokens like GitHub?


I haven't seen this anywhere so I figured it's worth asking. I'd really like to have a read only token that could be issued by my bank so I can have a little web client pull the balance data and update a budget for me. Yes I know there's mint budgeting and all that. I'm skeptical of handing the keys over to others and I'd like to DIY this. Is there some regulatory reason this doesn't exist? Are there any banks that have API access that clients can't use? Every time I switch banks to something that has cash envelope accounting they take it away or merge with another bank and I have to start the whole process over again. I'm beginning to think it would be easier to just do it myself if I had API access.

  👤 jonahbenton Accepted Answer ✓
The reason it doesn't exist is business model, not regulatory. (In fact the only reason that API or other conveniences such as PSD2 in the UK would exist is regulatory.)

As the SVB episode has most recently demonstrated, in fractional reserve banking, an individual with a deposit account is not a customer of that bank. They are a creditor. More importantly, as with users of free services, they are the raw materials from which banks create the actual products- loans- for their actual customers- businesses- usually- to whom they lend.

Consumer banking, ironically, is not a business any bank actually wants to be in. It is a loss leader, complicated, and inconvenient.

Individual level API access to deposit money is on no bank's top 100 (or 1000, or 10000) to do list.

👤 daydream
Some banks are starting to offer OAuth access to accounts for use by Mint and other like tools. Bank of America and Chase are examples.

That said I don’t if it’s possible to use as an individual or small developer. My guess is not really. But I don’t know for sure.

I do know that You Need A Budget offers an API that’s well documented and can be used by any customer. So you could sign up for YNAB, have it pull data from your bank account, and then use the YNAB API to access your data. This is very roundabout but it would work.

Good luck.

👤 brianjking
Hell, I'd be happy with most banks, credit card companies, etc, supporting (or forcing) Yubikeys or, at the very least a TOTP Authenticator.

My bank can sync into Mint, but there's not an API that I could just authenticate against and pull data natively into spreadsheets for example. It would be nice, I agree.

👤 meghan_rain
banks are regulated to death and have their own crypto solutions, see PSD2 in europe