<story><title>Increase: Banking API</title><url>https://increase.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>londons_explore</author><text>Yes, but when your script splits money into random amounts and puts things like &amp;quot;pizza money&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;rent&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;happy birthday&amp;quot; into the reference field, across thousands of accounts, most of whom also have a real user doing real transactions intermingled, suddenly it gets a lot harder for the bank to filter.&lt;p&gt;The bank typically has a rather simplistic set of rules to decide to investigate transactions (because they need to be able to explain how the rules work in a meeting with the government whenever their rules miss someone).  Things like &amp;quot;Transaction was over $1000 to a new payee or the reference contained the word &amp;#x27;bitcoin&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;.   The investigation will typically involve a human calling the customer, and sometimes asking for more evidence of what the transfer was for - for example, please send us the receipt for the car you said you bought.  It&amp;#x27;s quite an expensive process for the bank.&lt;p&gt;So, when someone via the API sends tens of thousands of transfers, the bank is spending lots of human hours verifying some&amp;#x2F;all of those.  &amp;quot;My script sent $55 to some stranger because I won a fully automated bet on the weather&amp;quot; is far harder to verify with documentation too.   And when some slip through the cracks, they get in trouble with the regulator.</text></item><item><author>JohnFen</author><text>&amp;gt; You know what makes money laundering super easy... a banking API so you can split the million dollars you want to launder into 1 million 1 dollar payments.&lt;p&gt;That would be noticed. It&amp;#x27;s called &amp;quot;structuring&amp;quot; and is itself illegal. Banks watch for this stuff.</text></item><item><author>londons_explore</author><text>I made an API for a bank...   I was a third party and made the API by screen scraping their webUI.   I sent their devs a link and initially there were positive messages going back and forth.&lt;p&gt;The API allowed you to see balance, transaction history, and make payments.&lt;p&gt;Before long, the API got quite popular, and lots of people were using it to make lots of payments automatically.&lt;p&gt;You know what makes money laundering super easy...   a banking API so you can split the million dollars you want to launder into 1 million 1 dollar payments.   And an API client which lets you treat each login cookie and account as an object in python.&lt;p&gt;Before long, the API and all users who had ever used it were perma-banned from the bank, because it was determined they posed too high a fraud&amp;#x2F;money-laundering risk.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m still salty because, after spending a week of my life building and refining that API, they banned me and &lt;i&gt;6 years later&lt;/i&gt; still claim they can&amp;#x27;t return the $350 that was in the account because they are still &amp;#x27;investigating&amp;#x27;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yellowapple</author><text>This is why every time I send money via Venmo I label it &amp;quot;drugs&amp;quot; (or a specific drug, like &amp;quot;pure Colombian cocaine&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;crystal meth&amp;quot;).</text></comment>
<story><title>Increase: Banking API</title><url>https://increase.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>londons_explore</author><text>Yes, but when your script splits money into random amounts and puts things like &amp;quot;pizza money&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;rent&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;happy birthday&amp;quot; into the reference field, across thousands of accounts, most of whom also have a real user doing real transactions intermingled, suddenly it gets a lot harder for the bank to filter.&lt;p&gt;The bank typically has a rather simplistic set of rules to decide to investigate transactions (because they need to be able to explain how the rules work in a meeting with the government whenever their rules miss someone).  Things like &amp;quot;Transaction was over $1000 to a new payee or the reference contained the word &amp;#x27;bitcoin&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;.   The investigation will typically involve a human calling the customer, and sometimes asking for more evidence of what the transfer was for - for example, please send us the receipt for the car you said you bought.  It&amp;#x27;s quite an expensive process for the bank.&lt;p&gt;So, when someone via the API sends tens of thousands of transfers, the bank is spending lots of human hours verifying some&amp;#x2F;all of those.  &amp;quot;My script sent $55 to some stranger because I won a fully automated bet on the weather&amp;quot; is far harder to verify with documentation too.   And when some slip through the cracks, they get in trouble with the regulator.</text></item><item><author>JohnFen</author><text>&amp;gt; You know what makes money laundering super easy... a banking API so you can split the million dollars you want to launder into 1 million 1 dollar payments.&lt;p&gt;That would be noticed. It&amp;#x27;s called &amp;quot;structuring&amp;quot; and is itself illegal. Banks watch for this stuff.</text></item><item><author>londons_explore</author><text>I made an API for a bank...   I was a third party and made the API by screen scraping their webUI.   I sent their devs a link and initially there were positive messages going back and forth.&lt;p&gt;The API allowed you to see balance, transaction history, and make payments.&lt;p&gt;Before long, the API got quite popular, and lots of people were using it to make lots of payments automatically.&lt;p&gt;You know what makes money laundering super easy...   a banking API so you can split the million dollars you want to launder into 1 million 1 dollar payments.   And an API client which lets you treat each login cookie and account as an object in python.&lt;p&gt;Before long, the API and all users who had ever used it were perma-banned from the bank, because it was determined they posed too high a fraud&amp;#x2F;money-laundering risk.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m still salty because, after spending a week of my life building and refining that API, they banned me and &lt;i&gt;6 years later&lt;/i&gt; still claim they can&amp;#x27;t return the $350 that was in the account because they are still &amp;#x27;investigating&amp;#x27;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pbreit</author><text>How is one even opening a dozen accounts, much less thousands?</text></comment>