[strzalek]

Hey, I’m an ex-Square that is part of founding engineering team at Column. My team will be monitoring this thread and we’ll be happy to answer any questions! Especially those about ACH, I’m sure you have plenty and we know it through-out!

[Brystephor]

1. Can you share some use cases for this?

2. It seems like I can use your API to create bank accounts with your bank. Does this mean I could become a "bank wrapper" and use your API to generate real bank accounts and become a digital bank without having to go through the legal processes of becoming a real bank?

[MichaelApproved]

That’s what I was getting from them but their marketing isn’t clear.

Use cases would be very helpful.

[earthboundkid]

How much COBOL do you have to write on a daily basis?

[strzalek]

Zero. The whole stack is built in golang from scratch and we integrate with FED over some... interesting protocols.

[jawspeak]

Using Fedline Command with Axway by chance? E.g. see https://www.frbservices.org/binaries/content/assets/crsocms/... matrix of ways to connect to the Fed.

[thecosas]

  we integrate with FED over some... interesting protocols.

Would love to know more!

[usrn]

My understanding is they sftp batches of CSV files at eachother.

[shivaas]

this is probably closer to the truth that you might have imagined :) that at that most of the $1T+ ACH transfers that happen daily in the US banking system happen over plaintext files and SFTP (source: I've written one of these files)

[solaxun]

So I guess that means handling SWIFT MT / ISO 20022 messages is a big part of the custom stack?

[Asafp]

Hi, I am an Engineer at Unit.co, a company that also builds Banking as a Service. I can share that not only we do not use COBOL, but our entire backend is written in Pure Functional Scala (and typescript for UI).

[drogus]

Looks interesting! Do you plan to create an SDK? Or is interfacing with the HTTP API will be the best way to use the app for now?

[_praf]

Engineer at Column here - we have definitely considered creating SDK's but most of our customers prefer the HTTP API's, which will likely remain the best way to use Column for a while.

[instagary]

Can you talk about instant ACH, why do some charter partners like Robinhood and Coinbase support it but other legacy banks don't?

How is instant ACH different to regular? Also, is it true that ACH is not instant bank to bank – essentially the banks settle up at the end of each month with 1 giant transaction?

What about P2P support via Zelle, I recently learned it's lipstick on a pig and basically ACH under the hood.

Sorry in advance if the questions are outside the scope of this thread.

[crate_barre]

Do you guys issue physical cards or checks?

[strzalek]

We’re an issuing bank and sponsor card programs on Visa & Mastercard. Our partners can offer both physical and virtual cards to users. Checks are currently in beta but please get in touch if we can help! https://dashboard.column.com/contact

[thrill]

Maybe do something fancy like X1 and offer a metal card?

[igrav55]

This looks awesome! A few questions:

- Will there be an openapi spec to generate clients in most languages?

- Do you support depositing checks via the dashboard?

- Out of curiosity, what database are you using for high availability?

[Asafp]

Hi, I am an engineer at Unit.co, a company that also builds Banking as a Service. We use PostgreSQL as database, and currently thinking about adding ElasticSearch to allow our users to do text search.

[SgtBastard]

Friend, its in poor taste to hijack a question about a competitors product to spruik your own - I would be less likely to consider Unit.co as a result of what you're doing here.

[Asafp]

My answer was written with the intention of helping others and sharing my knowledge with fellow engineers, I enjoy talking about tech and engineering and even thinking of writing a blog post about it.

[paisawalla]

Friend, it's bad form to impute negative motives where (over)exuberance is a sufficient explanation. This guy cares a lot about the product he or she works on, simply move on if their comment is not for you.

[SgtBastard]

>Just move on if their comment is not for you.

Ironic.

[joshbaptiste]

Will you blog about your back-end tech stack? It's interesting what a NEO-bank has to run these days to interface with other banks

[simplify]

Off topic: Does founding engineering team mean founders who are also engineers, or does it mean pre-launch engineer hires?

[sunsetSamurai]

how's the team liking using go so far? any pain points?