wayzel · HackerTrans

vor 5 Jahrendiscuss

They provide mostly non-overlapping features. Stripe = get paid. Plaid = connector into banking data (transaction history on a checking account, or the account # itself, for example). So, if you need to accept payments, or send money, you'd lean towards Stripe. If you instead wanted to get access to a user's financial data, such as if you are writing a budgeting app or personal financial management application, you'd lean towards Plaid.

wayzel

vor 7 Jahrendiscuss

"In the US, where there is no such requirement - the only way to access the bank account is to emulate a browser."

Not entirely correct. In the US, JPMorganChase, Intuit, and others have adopted the OFX standard (consortium-based, which provides #2) as a more secure, controlled API alternative to browser emulation.

wayzel

vor 8 Jahrendiscuss

In Europe regulation forced the hands of the banks to API-ify the data and make it accessible. In the US, as with many things, it is left to industry to sort out.

Plaid's implementation was aggressive (screen scraping, etc) but many banks are blocking that now and some, like JPMorgan Chase, have created APIs based on OFX (the industry consortium for secure data exchange) to allow controlled data access.

You, the customer, should always be able to choose which targets get to receive your data. Via OAuth mechanisms you grant them access without sharing your login/pw, and you can revoke at will.

wayzel

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

I should have been more clear: those taxes relate to communication services (VOIP) that interconnect with the public telecommunications network, e.g let you call phone numbers. They are not taxes for Internet access. And yes, there are a large number of other more restrictive regulations. Sources here: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-335228A1.p... (warning - PDF)

wayzel

vor 9 Jahrendiscuss

When VOIP and other communication services started to sprout in the 1990s the FCC let them coast without taxation for about a decade. They then reclassified all such services as common carriers so that they could be taxed as such. Common carriers must pay into various tax funds such as LNP (which funds citizens' rights to port their phone numbers between carriers), NANPA (which maintains the North American Numbering scheme), and USF (which subsidizes telephony buildout or services to areas that the private market would otherwise ignore). Most consumers see these as various charges as a roughly 20% up-charge on their bill.

wayzel

vor 10 Jahrendiscuss

The network effect is portable when the identities are preserved across products. For example, Facebook's separating out of FB Messenger was done while preserving the already built-up network effect.

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