An interesting part of the history of bank account feeds is that Intuit was a big part of the original OFX standardization effort. Initially OFX was looking to become a wonderful and well supported standard in North America. However, Intuit tried to turn the screws on the banks by charging hefty licensing fee for supporting OFX, and that eventually that killed the effort to free your bank account information.
I hope the lesson is clear for everyone: if you depend on someone for data, you don't get to charge them--they get to charge you. That goes double for banks who are generally extremely unhappy when they aren't the ones making money in a deal.
That's why Yodlee has a near monopoly. They are the only ones doing a decent job screenscraping from your bank, which is hardly secure or stable especially since some banks actively try to prevent this. This is very expensive and ultimately futile.
On the other hand, there's an opportunity for someone to get the OFX working again by reversing the flow of charges back towards the bank. If you do it well, you too can have a near monopoly and make money while you're at it.
If I recall, it was actually Microsoft who started OFX under the name Marble. They pitched Intuit on the idea, even though Intuit eventually became the dominant partner.
I hope the lesson is clear for everyone: if you depend on someone for data, you don't get to charge them--they get to charge you. That goes double for banks who are generally extremely unhappy when they aren't the ones making money in a deal.
That's why Yodlee has a near monopoly. They are the only ones doing a decent job screenscraping from your bank, which is hardly secure or stable especially since some banks actively try to prevent this. This is very expensive and ultimately futile.
On the other hand, there's an opportunity for someone to get the OFX working again by reversing the flow of charges back towards the bank. If you do it well, you too can have a near monopoly and make money while you're at it.