HN user
Forgive the shameless self-promotion, but we at Seed offer a customer facing API for read-only transaction data. We would happily build out more API features, but we've seen very little demand, despite the frequent HN threads about bank APIs.
We are a business focused bank, but we support sole proprietors and freelancers as well.
API docs are here: http://docs.seed.co/v1.0.0/docs
p.s. We are working on Android I promise please don't yell at us (again).
Cert pinning. EOL.
Hey there. I'm Brian, the CEO of Seed. Thanks for remembering us and thank you for trying us out. :)
Long story short, we're still working on making the API available to our members. Plans changed along the way and we ended up releasing our mobile business bank account first, but our long term goal of offering a more open platform remains.
It's tough to do anything innovative within the US banking system due to regulations, partner challenges, risk, and other factors, but we're going to keep working at it.
Seed (YC W15) - Online Business Banking - https://seed.co
ONSITE in San Francisco or Portland, REMOTE (US)
Role: Backend Engineer, iOS Engineer
Stack: Golang, Swift, Docker, AWS
Skills:
We value core software engineering experience, so being comfortable working w/o a framework and being able to code in other languages are a big plus.
Process:
Phone intro, phone screen, onsite + technical interview, decision. We strive to complete this process within 2 weeks if a candidates schedule permits.
Apply: https://seed.co/jobs/
Please include a cover letter and mention that you found us on HN. Also feel free to reach out to me at brian at seed.co
What we do:
We’re taking on the challenge of modernizing small business banking. We’re building beautiful, easy-to-use tools for banking, invoicing, expense tracking, and more, so our members can focus on helping their businesses thrive. Those tools also need to integrate smoothly with often-antiquated banking systems, and be bank-level secure. It’s a huge challenge, but one we enjoy tackling every day.
Recent press: https://seed.co/press/
Seed (YC W15) - Online Business Banking - https://seed.co
ONSITE in San Francisco or Portland, REMOTE (US)
Role: iOS Engineer, Backend Engineer
Stack: Golang, Swift, Docker, AWS
Skills: We value core software engineering experience, so being comfortable working w/o a framework and being able to code in other languages are a big plus.
Process:
Phone intro, phone screen, onsite + technical interview, decision. We strive to complete this process within 2 weeks if a candidates schedule permits.
Apply: https://seed.co/jobs/
Please include a cover letter and mention that you found us on HN. Also feel free to reach out to me at brian at seed.co
What we do:
We’re taking on the challenge of modernizing small business banking. We’re building beautiful, easy-to-use tools for banking, invoicing, expense tracking, and more, so our members can focus on helping their businesses thrive. Those tools also need to integrate smoothly with often-antiquated banking systems, and be bank-level secure. It’s a huge challenge, but one we enjoy tackling every day.
Recent press: https://seed.co/press/
Not exactly. The proposed charters are limited compared to traditional bank charters, but it's a start.
Seed (YC W15) - Online Banking for Small Business - https://seed.co
ONSITE in San Francisco or Portland, REMOTE (US)
Role: Frontend Engineer
Stack: JS, React, Golang, Swift, Docker, AWS
Skills: We value core software engineering experience, so being comfortable working w/o a framework and being able to code in other languages are a big plus.
Process:
Phone intro, phone screen, onsite + technical interview, decision. We strive to complete this process within 2 weeks if a candidates schedule permits.
Apply: https://seed.co/jobs/
Please include a cover letter and mention that you found us on HN. Also feel free to reach out to me at brian at seed.co
What we do:
We’re taking on the challenge of modernizing small business banking. We’re building beautiful, easy-to-use tools for banking, invoicing, expense tracking, and more, so our members can focus on helping their businesses thrive. Those tools also need to integrate smoothly with often-antiquated banking systems, and be bank-level secure. It’s a huge challenge, but one we enjoy tackling every day.
Recent press: https://seed.co/press/
Seed (YC W15) - Online Banking for Small Business - https://seed.co
ONSITE in San Francisco or Portland, REMOTE (US)
Roles: Backend Engineer, Frontend Engineer, iOS Engineer
Stack: Golang, Swift, React, Docker, AWS
Process:
Phone intro, phone screen, onsite + technical interview, decision. We strive to complete this process within 2 weeks if a candidates schedule permits.
Apply: https://seed.co/jobs/
Please include a cover letter and mention that you found us on HN. Also feel free to reach out to me at brian at seed.co
What we do:
We’re taking on the challenge of modernizing small business banking. We’re building beautiful, easy-to-use tools for banking, invoicing, expense tracking, and more, so our members can focus on helping their businesses thrive. Those tools also need to integrate smoothly with often-antiquated banking systems, and be bank-level secure. It’s a huge challenge, but one we enjoy tackling every day.
Recent press: https://seed.co/press/
Just send me an email at brian at seed.co. We're open to all kinds of interns so we don't have a specific job opening listed.
Seed (YC W15) - Online Banking for Small Business - https://seed.co
ONSITE in San Francisco or Portland, REMOTE (US)
Roles: Backend Engineer, Frontend Engineer, iOS Engineer, Interns
Stack: React, Golang, Swift, Docker, AWS
Process:
Phone intro, phone screen, onsite + technical interview, decision. We strive to complete this process within 2 weeks if a candidates schedule permits.
Apply: https://seed.co/jobs/
Please include a cover letter and mention that you found us on HN. Also feel free to reach out to me at brian at seed.co
What we do:
We’re taking on the challenge of modernizing small business banking. We’re building beautiful, easy-to-use tools for banking, invoicing, expense tracking, and more, so our members can focus on helping their businesses thrive. Those tools also need to integrate smoothly with often-antiquated banking systems, and be bank-level secure. It’s a huge challenge, but one we enjoy tackling every day.
Recent press: https://seed.co/press/
We would welcome any new entrants that sought to provide a better customer experience. All of the companies you mentioned have already entertained the idea of entering banking, but they haven't yet jumped in.
As for your other comment, apps and ATMs are already being used as an advertising channel. I wouldn't be surprised if we see (much) more of this.
I'm Brian, the cofounder and CEO of Seed. I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has.
I'll be on a flight for the next few hours, but I'll check in when I land.
Hi. I'm Brian, the cofounder and CEO of Seed.
While we have strong opinions about regulatory and legislative changes that would enable innovation, it's impractical to attempt systemic disruption as a seed stage company.
Our mission is not to change banking just for the sake of it. We are focused on providing a better service for our members.
There's a lot of room for improvement, even within the current system, and by focusing on things we can do rather than things we wish we could do, we'll be able to make positive progress.
Many well meaning startups have pursued immediate disruption and have failed. Our view is that if we are successful within the current environment, we'll have a better chance of being able to help move things in a positive direction.
SEED is a new online bank for small business. We've written about our approach to engineering and the tech we use in our latest blog post. Check it out, and if you have any questions for us we'll be here all day.
We are only available in the US currently.
+1 for Holvi. They're great.
I can no longer speak for them, but while I was there we were entirely focused on getting our core consumer online banking product right. We did not want to launch an API without properly supporting the community, and we didn't want to distract ourselves from executing on the core product. There were other complexities but it's not appropriate for me to say any more.
I used to be the VP of Engineering at Simple. We always wanted to release an API but weren't able to. They're working on a bunch of great stuff over there, but I hope they do release one someday.
Our API docs are here: http://docs.seed.co
We're actively updating them - lots more to come.
Hey there. I'm the co-founder and CEO of SEED. We launched our banking API a few weeks ago - https://seed.co
We are only serving business customers for now. Feel free to send me a note at brian at seed.co if you have any questions.
Thanks!
They own or co-own the patent(s). Last I checked they were still battling it out in court.
The relevant legislation that enabled Remote Deposit Capture (RDC) is the Check21 act, which you can learn about here: http://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/regcc-faq-check...
In theory, anyone can build a system to deposit checks via check images, but software/process patents are a (mostly bad) thing. :(
We're working to update our docs as quickly as possible, so transaction stuff will be there soon. As for checks, we're not planning on supporting check deposit via API initially. There are a few reasons:
1. Remote Check Deposit is a protected technology owned by Mitek and/or USAA, and we're limited in how we can use it.
2. Checks are a huge fraud vector, so we're going to be careful about how we support them.
3. Checks are literally the worst payment mechanism ever invented and we would love to see them die in a fire. So we're going to discourage their use as much as possible while providing better, easier to use payment mechanisms.
That having been said, you will be able to deposit checks into SEED, just not via API for now.
Thank you. We're honored to have the privilege to work on this problem and help the business community in any way possible.
We couldn't have done it without y'all, thank you!
We use http://readme.io and they are incredibly awesome. I can't give them a stronger or more positive recommendation.
If you fill out the form we'll send you an invite when we're able to accept new customers. There's a waiting list but we're working hard to get everyone on board as soon as possible.
We compete with banks, and also partner with them. Our model allows for multiple bank partners, but for the time being we're integrated with a single bank.
Our stuff is designed to be portable between banks where possible. There are only about half a dozen bank core systems in wide use in the US today, so in theory if we integrated with all of them we'd be able to partner with most any bank. To date we have integrated with two different cores.
If only it were black and white. Banks are regulated by a variety of groups - the FDIC, the OCC, the Fed, and state regulators. Different regulators have different viewpoints. Then, even within the same regulatory agency, different individual regulators have different viewpoints. Meanwhile each individual bank is unique - different capitalization, risk profile, market, and so on.
There are a lot of situations where there is no hard and fast law that prohibits banking a particular customer, but the opinion of a regulator goes a long way in encouraging or discouraging any particular bank from doing so. Marijuana banking is an example of the murky waters banks must wade through. Is it legal or not? Depends on who you ask.
I'm not privy to any details, but I assume that SVB's regulators feel that the bank does not present a risk to the system by banking an exchange. SVB is the 50th biggest bank in the country or so, so they're in a different situation than a startup or community bank.
I suspect this isn't a very satisfying answer. All I can say is that in the long run we are motivated to offer banking services to every lawful business that we can ably serve.
Fair point. We'll work to do a better job of helping people understand what we offer. Our focus has been to get our API into the hands of our early customers as soon as possible.
Hey there!
One thing I want to be clear about is that we will not support consumer bank accounts, either directly or through our customers. So it will not be possible to build your own branded consumer bank on SEED.
We expect our API will be used by companies that see value in automating their payments and receivables process, have a desire to integrate banking into their internal backend systems, have a desire to easily do analysis on their banking data, and so on. In the long run, we expect that most of our customers will use our mobile and web clients rather than using the API directly.
To answer your other questions:
1. Properly managing fraud is critical to our business. As you mentioned, the potential risks are scary both for us and our customers. Some of what we do will remain private, but over time we'll share more of our approach to ensuring the safety and security of our customer funds. While we intend to protect ourselves against loss as well as or better than traditional banks, we believe there are many ways to do so without the inconveniences that most banks impose on their customers. Our first hire is an expert in cryptography, mathematics, and infosec, so that should give you some idea of where our priorities are.
2. We have thought a lot about how to best serve the bitcoin community. In fact, that used to be our pitch -- a bank for the bitcoin economy. As we spent many months talking to bitcoin merchants and the community at large, what we found is that the problems they face are the same problems many businesses face -- existing banks are serving business customers poorly. Until bitcoin stabilizes as a store of value or derivative strategies are baked into the exchanges, we don't believe that bitcoin transaction volume will grow meaningfully, so we're not focused on serving bitcoin merchants right now. Since our platform is flexible, we'll be able to integrate bitcoin support if and when it becomes a need for our customer base, so we'll see what happens. Personally, I own bitcoin and would love to see it or other cryptocurrencies thrive, and I'm a believer in the blockchain as an enabling technology.
As to banking the exchanges, we're really limited by our regulators. We believe that properly operated exchanges that have MSB licenses and are running compliant KYC/AML programs deserve access to banking, and we believe that we can provide banking services to exchanges in a safe and lawful manner. However, the risk tolerance of our regulators does not always match our own. This is something we'll have to work towards. In the meantime, it's heartening to see that some exchanges appear to have found stable onshore banking relationships, such as Coinbase + SVB.