I wasn’t sure where to ask this, so please feel free to direct me to a different community if there’s a good one for this question.

Are there any US banks that allow their clients programmatic access to their own data? As far as I’m aware, that’s not really a thing in the US, but I might be willing to switch banks if there are any that provide access.

  • partial_accumen
    link
    41 year ago

    I’m hoping someone gives you a better answer, but in case no one does, here’s one potential path depending on how much work you’re willing to put into it.

    For decades there has been a Personal Finance software package call Quicken. Even before online banking existed, Quicken offered a way for banks to export transaction and balance data for people to manage their finances. Rich online banking came along and largely negated this need for most folks, but the Quicken links and exports were already implemented in thousands of banks across the USA. Now, I imagine some have given up supporting Quicken exports, but a quick Google search shows there are Quicken users doing exports even today in 2023, so apparently its still a thing.

    So to programmatic access:

    I don’t know of any banks that have a straight up REST API you can hit, but with Quicken the linkage is there for exports you’d just have to wrap your own controls around it. Here’s one conversation about some advance end users (not programmers) doing basic automation. In one search I saw some references to some python packages, so maybe that’s path less kludgy.

    • @[email protected]OP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      21 year ago

      It looks like that’s all about using browser automation to record the clicks needed to log into accounts and export the files? If Quicken could pull information directly, that would be better. It looks like Chase, for example, ended its OFX access last year. :/