It could just be that other platforms have a solution as simple as having someone check the bank account every hour who then manually credits accounts based on received funds. Our bank displays faster payments in near real time on their website...
Isn't that a really easy option and quick fix for AC in the short term? If not having an employee full time certainly have someone when there is or might be a loan drawing down and lenders want to get their cash in quick.
It's been suggested and is being looked into as an option. It's not terribly efficient though and involving a human means more scope for mistake. So it may suffice as a stop gap.
Former CTO of one of the platforms posting in a personal capacity.
Just as an experiment, I tried transferring money into my Money.thing account. Guess what? Even on a Sunday it arrived in my account about 4 minutes later. That person doing manual allocations must be on double-time.
Just as an experiment, I tried transferring money into my Money.thing account. Guess what? Even on a Sunday it arrived in my account about 4 minutes later. That person doing manual allocations must be on double-time.
Interesting!!
I did a deposit about 2 or 3 hours ago and it still shows as pending in my MT account.
Certainly on Friday the email confirmations were coming from MT in minutes.
Just as an experiment, I tried transferring money into my Money.thing account. Guess what? Even on a Sunday it arrived in my account about 4 minutes later. That person doing manual allocations must be on double-time.
Interesting!!
I did a deposit about 2 or 3 hours ago and it still shows as pending in my MT account.
Certainly on Friday the email confirmations were coming from MT in minutes.
I'm not expecting that at weekends though!!
Someone's been watching this thread. Email confirmation just received!!
Isn't that a really easy option and quick fix for AC in the short term? If not having an employee full time certainly have someone when there is or might be a loan drawing down and lenders want to get their cash in quick.
It's been suggested and is being looked into as an option. It's not terribly efficient though and involving a human means more scope for mistake. So it may suffice as a stop gap.
The manual process might work more easily for a small platform with a limited number of deposits to deal with, so it might be less viable for AC now and even less so as AC grow. But if it could be implemented as an interim step to remove a seemingly significant disadvantage AC have at the moment then it might be well worth doing until a better solution can be put into place.
I'm certainly no IT expert -- far from it, actually -- but I've heard of 'screen scrapers' that can extract data from website displays automatically so that the data can be used elsewhere. If AC actually can view their client account via their bank's website and can see incoming FPs as soon as they are credited, then this would appear to be a perfect situation to apply such tools so that lenders' accounts can be credited as soon as possible. Is that feasible, chris?
Finally, as a future shareholder, I'm a bit concerned by the statement that "the completion of our funding round allows us to explore options that were previously prohibitively expensive." I do hope the new funding won't mean that the general principle of obtaining value for money is abandoned completely!
Whilst AC is solving the 'getting money in quickly' problem.
Perhaps they might wish to solve the 'Getting money out quickly' problem as well.
Here you are AC, an opportunity to beat your competitors by instigating a 'Faster Payment' withdrawal process at the same time (only if that doesn't slow down the FP in resolution).
It's been suggested and is being looked into as an option. It's not terribly efficient though and involving a human means more scope for mistake. So it may suffice as a stop gap.
The manual process might work more easily for a small platform with a limited number of deposits to deal with, so it might be less viable for AC now and even less so as AC grow. But if it could be implemented as an interim step to remove a seemingly significant disadvantage AC have at the moment then it might be well worth doing until a better solution can be put into place.
I'm certainly no IT expert -- far from it, actually -- but I've heard of 'screen scrapers' that can extract data from website displays automatically so that the data can be used elsewhere. If AC actually can view their client account via their bank's website and can see incoming FPs as soon as they are credited, then this would appear to be a perfect situation to apply such tools so that lenders' accounts can be credited as soon as possible. Is that feasible, chris?
Finally, as a future shareholder, I'm a bit concerned by the statement that "the completion of our funding round allows us to explore options that were previously prohibitively expensive." I do hope the new funding won't mean that the general principle of obtaining value for money is abandoned completely!
You need to use a keycard to log in to the bank account so we can't automate the process. Screen scraping is an okay technique but is dependent on the structure of the page being scraped remaining relatively static. You can code some flexibility in but there's always risk of error or incorrect information being retrieved, which rules it out for something so mission critical.
With regards to value for money, in addition to a monthly fee the bank charge a fee per statement downloaded via their API. So if we download the statement every hour 24 hours a day then the fees add up quickly to hundreds of pounds per day. That was just about swallowable prior to the fund raise but easier to cope with now. There are other alternatives that are even more expensive but give real time access to the full suite of banking functions. I don't have the detail yet but expect this solution to take longer to integrate so it could be we go through a couple of solutions over the next few quarters until we end up with the best of breed solution.
Value for money is core to all we do throughout the business and I don't see that changing any time soon. We're focussed on sustainable growth which implies maintaining a level of profitability, and whilst some may see our strict adherence to the client money regulations as a weakness hopefully it also demonstrates we're focussed on the long term viability of the business and not looking to cut corners for a quick win.
Former CTO of one of the platforms posting in a personal capacity.
Whilst AC is solving the 'getting money in quickly' problem.
Perhaps they might wish to solve the 'Getting money out quickly' problem as well.
Here you are AC, an opportunity to beat your competitors by instigating a 'Faster Payment' withdrawal process at the same time (only if that doesn't slow down the FP in resolution).
API access will allow us to automated this as well. I suspect, but don't know, that our interim solution with the bank will improve matters somewhat but won't be as fast as FP, but that the longer term best of breed system will allow us to instantly enact withdrawals via FP.
Former CTO of one of the platforms posting in a personal capacity.
I did a deposit about 2 or 3 hours ago and it still shows as pending in my MT account.
Certainly on Friday the email confirmations were coming from MT in minutes.
I'm not expecting that at weekends though!!
Someone's been watching this thread. Email confirmation just received!!
Honestly guys this is too much!!
My MoneyThing email came through just after 15:10 as well (deposited this morning). This suggests that MT scans for deposits at a fixed time, probably once only on a Sunday to limit cost
Someone's been watching this thread. Email confirmation just received!!
Honestly guys this is too much!!
My MoneyThing email came through just after 15:10 as well (deposited this morning). This suggests that MT scans for deposits at a fixed time, probably once only on a Sunday to limit cost
Nope, I put some money into MT today and the email came through within 5 mins, at 12:29.
With regards to value for money, in addition to a monthly fee the bank charge a fee per statement downloaded via their API.
You have to pay every time you use their API!
Perhaps the top priority should be changing banks.
The only other bank that would offer us the service we wanted had a similar pricing model (the per download costs were lower but the monthly fees were higher so it balanced out).
Former CTO of one of the platforms posting in a personal capacity.
Perhaps the top priority should be changing banks.
The only other bank that would offer us the service we wanted had a similar pricing model (the per download costs were lower but the monthly fees were higher so it balanced out).
This does nothing to dispel the image of price-gouging banks holding their customers to ransom. Is it any wonder that the banks are held in such low esteem?
Does this need to be every hour? If I have correctly understood the requirement it is for a same day solution so one, or perhaps two runs a day would suffice provided the cut off times were publicized. I would hate to see any form of interim manual arrangement, this leaves too much scope for errors.
