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One of the reasons why legacy apps continue to live on (despite outliving their usefulness ) is third party tie-ins.

The reason most companies are reluctant to switch from slack is because they have external third parties i.e. their partners connected with external channels within slack. Changing their internal DM/IM system will remove their ability to communicate with their partners in the same system.

Perhaps a plugin where slack messages can be forwarded to Chatto and eventually bi-directional i.e. Chatto messages can be forwarded to Slack.

I interacted with Om a few times. Genuinely good soul. I met him a while back - about ~15 years or so. In spite of his busy schedule he took time out to speak with me. Gave me some valuable tips on startup world. I don't say this about a lot of people but the world is less of a place without Om. You were way too young to leave us Om. I will miss you.

Sidenote: In the heydays i.e. about 15-20 years back or so Techcrunch and GigaOm were competitors. Techcrunch was founded by Michael Arrington, known for his brusque and no holds barred blogs and barbs. He would roast his competitors alive, if he could. Well, all except Om. For Om, Micheal had nothing but praise.

There is nothing preventing PIX from going global (just like VISA/MC). If you look at the history of domestic systems e.g. China Unipay, India UPI/Rupay, Japan JCB they started off as local systems and went global.

Japan JCB is Internationally accepted. China Unipay is also considerably "international" i.e. internationally accepted and India's UPI/Rupay card is adding new countries at a fast clip. The reason most people "don't know" whether they can pay with China Unipay or India's Rupay is because they are not advertised with the same logos as VISA/MC on acceptance sites.

However both China Unipay and India's Rupay through their partnership with Discover Card (now owned by CapitalOne ) are accepted anywhere Discover card is accepted

The place where these "domestic" systems haven't quite measured up to VISA/MC is the issuing side i.e. the entities controlling these systems currently do not allow foreign banks to issue cards with their logos or use their network to settle the transactions. If you're in the US, you may not get a Unipay or Rupay card from a local bank. There are multiple reasons for that, some strategic some political.

It will be interesting to see how they evolve over time. In spite of the exponential rise of PIX , UPI and Unipay, VISA and MC themselves have been doing remarkably well in the past 10-20 years. Unlikely either of them will go belly up.

It is delightful to see PIX's exponential growth. It was preceded by India's UPI and borrowed heavily from it Here's a paper describing the experience: https://www.braziliankeynesianreview.org/BKR/article/view/33...

Zelle has many limitations:

1) The recipient needs to download the app and sign up. How does the Payor know whether the recipient has Zelle app or not

2) Even with the app, there are only about 50-100 banks that allow Zelle transfers. If someone's bank does not offer Zelle they are directed to enter their Debit Card number using "Push to Card" to receive the funds. While the funds land up in the bank account instantly either way, some Debit Cards have limitations and will not be enabled to receive funds

3) Zelle is essentially a "messaging layer" i.e. the actual settlement happens overnight using ACH rails. As a result the sending as well as the receiving bank are taking some risk in terms of allow the recipient to withdraw money when the underlying settlement hasn't happened. If the settlement fails the receiver's bank will need to claw bank the money from the receiver As a result there are some really low limits on daily transfers i.e. between 1-2K/day for most banks

4) Above all Zelle (like most other payment rails ) is a push system i.e. one can push money using Zelle. One may not pull money using Zelle

RFP i.e. Request for Payment is not part of this release. Furthermore there is no ETA from the Fed as to the release date for RFP.

Currently FedNow is simply a push payment system i.e. bank account holder may be able to use FedNow to push money out from their bank account to someone else's bank account.

The limitation here is the bank account holder must know the account number of the recipient. This is a huge limiter in adoption since most people don't want to share their bank account numbers and maintaining a directory of people's bank account numbers is cumbersome to say the least

Yes, the Fed is working on a directory but they have not yet announced the launch date for such a directory, not have they mentioned the index i.e. will it be phone number ? email ? something else ?

Bottom line: FedNow launch: Step in the right direction but still a long way to go

So this is what Will wanted to do when he left Plaid. Having the financial means to "buy" a bank certainly helped. Nice!

Getting a new bank charter since the financial crisis of 2008-2009 has been virtually impossible. The number of banks in the US in the past decade or so has come down from ~6K to ~4K. New licenses for banks (State or Federal ) since 2008 have been negligible. So, let's buy a "small" bank. So far so good

Next part is core banking software as well as Money movement software. This is where is gets interesting.

Smaller banks use Fiserv/FIS/Jack Henry (and a long tail of other core banking providers) and larger ones have a mix of systems with legacy cores e.g. DXC, Misys and bunch of others. While it's tempting to build an entire banking stack from ground up it may not pass regulatory and compliance muster for a while. Plus even some the legacy cores have now built a rich RESTful API. Would be interesting to know how much of the core was built in house over the past 3 years

Next part is Money Movement. This is where ACH, Push to Card, Fedwire and RTP come in

ACH isn't that bad. Most banks use ACH "aggregators" which in turn connect to one of the two ACH Operators. Once a bank has a business relationship with the Fed it's not tough to connect to these aggregators and simply sftp files to/from them

Push to Card is available through VISA Direct and MC Send. Given their financial resources and fintech background it wouldn't be difficult to get a connection going there

RTP would be an interesting one but a relatively easy one since the Clearing House is already used to working with multiple banks and have "plug-ins"

So, now it all boils down to the business procedures and KYC/KYB on Fintechs that want to use Column's services. This can be done very efficiently online

The T&Cs are heavily skewed in favor of column. Some of them may be unenforceable. But those can be negotiated

Disclaimer: I'm the founder of Checkbook.io ( a payments platform with a single API for sending payments)

There are 2 parts to any payment, the sender side and the receiver side. Bill.com has historically pulled all the funds from the sender's bank account and held them in a custodial bank account controlled by Bill.com to pay out the recipients

They have earned float on this amount and given they are a public company you can see from the historical statements what percentage of their earnings are from carrying such float. (It depends on the interest rate and given the rates have been low recently it was about 10%-20% historically, may increase or decrease)

They have decided to do the same on the receiver side now i.e. instead of disbursing funds to the recipient they will simply hold them until the recipient manually collects them. This is somewhat unprecedented in the payments world - I don't know of any other Business payments processor doing it. It's basically a paypal type wallet being foisted on the recipient without an opt-in

In so far as "Are they allowed to do so" ? Bill.com is registered as a Money Transmitter (not a bank ) so in partnership with their bank they can do this. From the principles of ...let's say "generally acceptable payment processing rules" this is bad, particularly since it's an opt-in

There are multiple other alternative payment processors available, including the company I work for

Yes, use of cards i.e. Credit Cards is likely to decline in the US. However that does not mean Credit Card use is declining at all. Instead it's increasing. There is a movement an shift toward using Cards for business payments. Given that business payments are an order of magnitude larger than Consumer payments the actual amount charged on Cards is continuing to and will continue to increase

Credit Karma ? It was acquired by Intuit, not Square

Seems like a simple value proposition here: BNPL is growing like crazy. Square doesn't have a strong product in BNPL space. Add to that it will get a presence in AUS/NZ and it becomes a good value to Square expanding product and global footprint. Paying about 20-25% of it's market cap to acquire a company at appx 20X multiple of it's revenue with a growth rate of 1X. Seems like a fair deal in today's hot market. Is there anything else to it ?

Seems like this applies to unencrypted communications only. Most http traffic is over https so will need considerably more work to decrypt it

Checkbook.io | Digital Payments | San Mateo/ San Francisco CA | ONSITE | Full-time | Engineering | $120K+ and equity We are a fintech startup and solving the problem of sending payments. paper Checks are still profound in the business world and there are no easy alternatives to them. ACH takes 4 working days. Instant and Real-time Payments are the way to go. Contrary to popular opinion paper Checks are not going away, in fact according the 2018 report by the Federal Reserve 15.2 Billion paper Checks were sent in the US alone, transferring a sum of money 3X times VISA/MC combined! We’ve built a way to convert Checks directly to real-time payments bypassing ACH altogether.

Recipient can Deposit them online by verifying their bank account instantly, no signup. no login, no app to download. Basically we are doing to paper Checks what Stripe and Square have done to the Credit Card space. We’re in midst of our Series A, seeing exponential growth, have a small but great team and super investors (Tim Draper, Naval Ravikant/Kevin Laws of Angelist, our customers and many more ) i.e. this would be a good time to join.

Looking for both a back-end as well as a front-end engineer. Need to have a strong background in being able to write scalable software, preferably multi-paradigm, disciplined. I’m the Founder of the company - this is a “founding team” level opportunity - you’ll be working with me and other core people in the team. Work hard - play hard.

Our tech stack is Python, Angular, Postgres.

We move fast - if you’ve done a hackathon - we’ll probably want to do one with you and it’ll be clear if we are a mutual fit

Email admin@checkbook.io or pj [at] checkbook.io

FedNow is a while away. RTP (Real-time payments) from the The Clearing House is already doing it. They have appx half the DDAs (bank accounts) in the US covered. Another year or two they will have 80-90% Also Push to Card and VISA/MC Debit are real-time payment systems i.e. 7x24x365 where you can pull or push money to the bank account linked to the VISA/MC branded ATM card Bottom line: Fednow may be too little too late, but real-time payments are happening outside of VISA/MC

VISA/MC are aware of this. They expect "Interchange compression" i.e. reduction in revenue from Credit Card fees as users switch to other systems. However it isn't a show stopper because in parallel they have discovered (and are using ) new ways to increase interchange revenue e.g. Virtual Cards, Prepaid Cards etc.

FedNow is a while away. RTP (Real-time payments) from the The Clearing House is already doing it. They have appx half the DDAs (bank accounts) in the US covered. Another year or two they will have 80-90% Also Push to Card and VISA/MC Debit are real-time payment systems i.e. 7x24x365 where you can pull or push money to the bank account linked to the VISA/MC branded ATM card

Bottom line: Fednow may be too little too late

OK. But will DoJ disallow the acquisition of finicity by Mastercard ? VISA and Mastercard follow each other. I'm waiting to hear the verdict on finicity acquisition by MC

AFAIK Stripe (/dev/payments back then ) never demo'd on the demo day of either S09 or S10. YC had/has a deal with Sequoia that Sequoia gets first dibs on the companies in each batch before demo day. Stripe presented to a bunch of VCs but got picked up before the demo day.

Basically they had funding before the demo day.

Also they stayed in "beta" all the way until Sept/Oct 2011 when they formally launched on Techcrunch. That gave them enough time to hone the basic API, work out a TPPP (Third party payment processor ) deal with Wells Fargo and actually try it out before launching.

Sorry, just added

I lost my father some back too, though he lived longer, I can relate. Hit me up, my email is in my profile, would love to connect

There is another reason. This is very specific to the way USA does things. It has to do with the role of the government vs. market. Other countries also had an antiquated payments infrastructure e.g. Cheques in Britian, Scandinavian countries etc. The government there simply mandated the dozen or so banks to come up with an instant/real-time payment system and it was rolled out in a few years

US has more than 10,000 banks and credit unions. That combined with the fact that US the most "market driven" of the industrialized countries it has take a backseat approach of letting the "market" solve it

There have been attempts by the "market" e.g. wallets and lately "push to card" by VISA/MC and RTP by the The Clearing House but it has realized that the Federal Government needs to come up with a standard settlement network with specifications and a protocol that "market" i.e. private companies can build upon.

Given the timeline i.e. 2023-2024, it may be a little late since apps and companies building on top of P2C (Push to Card) and RTP (Real-time Payments ) are likely to corner substantial portion of faster 24x365 payments before FedNow is ready.

And don't forget even if it's ready on time it'll take another 2-4 years for all the Financial Institutions to connect to it

I like this. As a founder I'm constantly multi-tasking. Getting "maker" time is virtually impossible. Having accountability in 1 hour increments is good. The key is the overhead of setting this up and communicating should be minimal compared to the task at hand, else it won't be efficient

Checkbook.io | Blockchain enabled Digital Checks | San Mateo/ San Francisco CA | ONSITE | Full-time | Engineering | $100K+ and equity We are a fintech startup and solving the problem of paper Checks (sending payments) but converting them to Instant Payments. Contrary to popular opinion paper Checks are not going away, in fact according the 2018 report by the Federal Reserve 15.2 Billion paper Checks were sent in the US alone, transferring a sum of money 3X times VISA/MC combined! We’ve built a way to send images of Checks instantly in email/text and the recipient can Deposit them online by verifying their bank account instantly. Basically we are doing to paper Checks what Stripe and Square have done to the Credit Card space. We’re in midst of our Series A, seeing exponential growth, have a small but great team and super investors (Tim Draper, Naval Ravikant/Kevin Laws of Angelist thru one of their angelist funds, our customers and many more ) i.e. this would be a good time to join

Looking for both a back-end as well as a front-end engineer. Need to have a strong background in being able to write scalable software, preferably multi-paradigm, disciplined. - I’m the Founder of the company - this is a “co-founder” level opportunity - you’ll be working with me and other core people in the team. Work hard - play hard.

Our tech stack is Python, Angular, Postgres.

We move fast - if you’ve done a hackathon - we’ll probably want to do one with you and it’ll be clear if we are a mutual fit

Email admin@checkbook.io or pj [at] checkbook.io

Is this functionally different from the US immigration authorities asking to inspect a person's social media content on their cellphone/laptop when entering the US ? Not just from "hostile" countries like Iran but occasionally from visitors from Canada ? I know at least one Canadian born citizen (had an Islamic name ) who was asked to reveal their social media profile and had their smartphone searched

Checkbook.io | Blockchain enabled Digital Checks | San Mateo/ San Francisco CA | ONSITE | Full-time | Engineering | $100K+ and equity We are a fintech startup and solving the problem of paper Checks but converting them to Instant Payments. Contrary to popular opinion paper Checks are not going away, in fact according the 2018 report by the Federal Reserve 15.2 Billion paper Checks were sent in the US alone, transferring a sum of money 3X times VISA/MC combined! We’ve built a way to send images of Checks instantly in email/text and the recipient can Deposit them online by verifying their bank account instantly. Furthermore building and enabling a Blockchain for settlement enables instant verification and disbursement. Basically we are doing to paper Checks what Stripe and Square have done to the Credit Card space.

We’re closing our Series A, seeing exponential growth, have a small but great team and super investors (Tim Draper, Naval Ravikant/Kevin Laws of Angelist thru one of their angelist funds, our customers and many more ) i.e. this would be a good time to join

Looking for both a back-end as well as a front-end engineer. Need to have a strong background in being able to write scalable software, preferably multi-paradigm, disciplined. - I’m the Founder of the company - this is a “co-founder” level opportunity - you’ll be working with me and other core people in the team. Work hard - play hard.

Our tech stack is Python, Angular, Postgres.

We move fast - if you’ve done a hackathon - we’ll probably want to do one with you and it’ll be clear if we are a mutual fit

Email admin@checkbook.io or pj [at] checkbook.io

Sooner or later they will need to make profit. I posit they are on a good trajectory to do so:

Square and Stripe will make profit in payments (they almost are) Coinbase will make a profit in crypto (it's already break even) Affirm, Lendup, Sofi etc. will make a profit in lending Robinhood and the likes of it will make a profit in trading

The reason is simple: The traditional companies that they are displacing had an order of magnitude higher cost structure and weren't able to transform their backend legacy systems quickly enough (yes, they did transform their front-end UI/UX somewhat to match the newer ones, but the core is not scalable to be able to offer newer products). If the older companies were able to make a profit the newer ones will make greater profit. Again, to take Robinhood as an example: Free trading a great lure for users, however most of the money is made on other services e.g. float. Thus giving away a small part of revenue i.e. trading cost and recoup more from other services is huge.

Financials are not public but they make money like other brokerages i.e. on the float. They also seem to have a fremium model. Add to that other products they are offering and I won't be surprised if they growing in revenue per user terms. Yes, they are likely using VC money for growth but also have long term potential for a viable model

What percentage of the users at Schwab use the premium tools, my guess is somewhere between 1-10% ? Does Schwab earn disproportionate revenue from them ? If yes, then I can see your point but as someone below points out most brokerages make money off balances carried in the brokerage accounts. That makes Robinhood (and the likes of it ) valuable since it's more about monthly active users. My point is user base growth has been stagnant with traditional brokerages, whereas fintech upstarts are on a tear. That combined with other revenue vectors e.g. crypto trading, SIPC insured bank accounts etc. make it difficult for traditional brokerages to compete

Am I the only one who thinks nobody is talking about the elephant in the room ? i.e. the cause and effect. Fintech companies like Robinhood have popularized the concept of (a) zero fee trading and (b) better UI/UX and just better service/offering on highly scalable platforms that allow them to introduce new products/services, which are virtually impossible for legacy providers like Schwab. Seems like that is the single most important cause of Schwab and TDAmeritrade merger. Much like ~15 years ago when "Internet" based trading companies forced the traditional "phone calling" brokers to either merge with Internet upstarts or go out of business. Schwab survived the first wave of disruption as it aggressively embraced into Internet based trading. There was a wave of consolidation with other purely online trading companies e.g. Datek, Scottrade etc. merged into what is now TDAmeritrade.

Seems like the traditionals haven't been able to survive the second wave of disruption. This is what is prompting the merger i.e. if you can't grow like the fintechs then cut costs using merger cost synergies. A side effect of this is move from extremely high cost locales to lower cost ones. It's PR couched in terms like "Any additional real estate decisions will be made as part of the integration process, over time."

Good for San Fran and the bay area, it seems. Some prime corporate space being vacated should take a little pressure off real-estate prices (I hope).

Checkbook.io | Blockchain enabled Digital Checks | San Mateo/ San Francisco CA | ONSITE | Full-time | Engineering | $100K+ and equity We are a fintech startup and solving the problem of paper Checks. Contrary to popular opinion paper Checks are not going away, in fact according the 2017 report by the Federal Reserve 15.2 Billion paper Checks were sent in the US alone, transferring a sum of money 4X times VISA/MC combined! We’ve built a way to send images of Checks instantly in email and the recipient can Deposit them online by verifying their bank account instantly. Furthermore building and enabling a Blockchain for settlement enables instant verification and disbursement. Basically we are doing to paper Checks what Stripe and Square have done to the Credit Card space.

We’re Seed -> Series A, seeing exponential growth, have a small but great team and super investors (Tim Draper, Naval Ravikant/Kevin Laws of Angelist thru one of their angelist funds, our customers and many more ) i.e. this would be a good time to join

Looking for both a back-end as well as a front-end engineer. Need to have a strong background in being able to write scalable software, preferably multi-paradigm, disciplined. - I’m the Founder of the company - this is a “co-founder” level opportunity - you’ll be working with me and other core people in the team. Work hard - play hard.

Our tech stack is Python, Angular, Postgres.

We move fast - if you’ve done a hackathon - we’ll probably want to do one with you and it’ll be clear if we are a mutual fit

Email admin@checkbook.io or pj [at] checkbook.io

Sure, we could call it "flexible PTO" but nomenclature isn't the point. The comment originally was the person wanted a guaranteed 5 weeks, no more, no less. That is "fixed PTO". A high growth startup needs flexibility and thus "flexible PTO" policy helps. Some employees need just 1-2 week. Others 2-3 weeks. Yet other 3-4 weeks. Flexibility helps both employee and employer