Ask HN: How do sites like coinbase.com or mint.com access your bank accounts?

9 pointssebastian13y ago2 comments

Does anyone know how they are able to access your bank accounts information after you provide them with your online banking credentials. I would assume there is a common library or API that these sites are using instead of implementing a parser for each bank.

Any thoughts will be appreciated.

2 comments

bennyjoseph13y ago

Mint used to use a company called Yodlee to do data aggregation. You can find more information here: http://www.yodlee.com/developers-and-alliances/yodlee-apis/

Since Mint's acquisition by Intuit, they have switched over to Intuit's in-house data aggregation system. Intuit is planning to release these APIs to developers some time in the next few months. You can find more information here: http://developer.intuit.com/agg-cat/

There are some other companies out there like CashEdge and ByAllAccounts, but they tend not to do deals with startup companies and instead focus on selling to big financial institutions like banks, etc.

You also might want to check out Wesabe's (former Mint competitor) data aggregation system which they have open-sourced: https://github.com/wesabe/ssu

sebastianOP13y ago

Excellent information. Checking out yodlee and wesabe's ssu.

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