[jeremyjh]

I'm a little confused about who your customers are.

Do I have this right?

- Competent to develop and manage AML, KYC programs

- Wants to handle underwriting, fraud, compliance & operational risk exposure

- Develops software

- Doesn't want to talk to ACH & VISA

- Operates only in the US

Who is that?

[moooo99]

This seems to be the US equivalent to Solarisbank, which operates only in some EU countries. I don't know any specifics, but I have encountered Solaris a few times. For example they are used by TradeRepublic, basically the German Robinhood equivalent, and a handful of Neobank providers. Those Neobanks usually focus onto a specific niche and build their product based on the services offered by Solaris.

I would imagine that Column could provide similar their services to similar companies and make the development of financial products significantly faster.

[jo6gwb]

This is the equivalent to Cross River Bank which is US based, FDIC insured, and built its own core bank system.

[mushufasa]

I imagine these limitations are going to be a moving target as they grow.

A lot of developer driven organizations are very happy to outsource complex parts of development to managed services so they can focus on their core differentiators, especially when it comes to parts of the stack that need super high availability and security. This is why Auth0/Okta are big businesses and not everyone rolls their own key cloak / shibboleth instances, as one of many examples.

This clearly seems like the Apex/Drivewealth model but for challenger banks or new online banking operations. It is hard to predict what startups or new projects will need this because those platforms can unlock innovation for new categories (e.g. no one imagined commission free trading in 2008, and Robinhood wouldn't exist without Apex).

[jeremyjh]

I guess my point is that payment and ledger back-ends aren't the hardest part about running a bank, they aren't even the hardest technology component. This isn't "for developers" in the same sense that Stripe is. It is for people ready to run a bank. Sure it will save you paying lawyers and regulators for charters and it will save you from buying a mainframe to run some crufty COBOL ledger but that still leaves a lot of yak shaving before you even get to the interesting part of your Fintech product.

Okta is successful because almost every application needs authentication, almost every organization needs SSO, and no one considers it a core competency.

The intersection of organizations who can run a bank but don't already have entrenched software to do so, and want to build all the other software themselves seems vanishingly small.

[TheColorYellow]

> The intersection of organizations who can run a bank but don't already have entrenched software to do so, and want to build all the other software themselves seems vanishingly small.

Most FinTech is like this though. User Facing front end custom services built on top of bank infra. The bank infra is typically a bank partner and rarely is something like Stripe depending on the exact use case. This basically provides an intermediate alternative between Stripe and bespoke banking relationship.

[devmor]

This is my line of query as well.

At this level of integration minutiae I don't see a the benefit in not integrating directly with card issuers and ACH.

[bpicolo]

There are several industries where wire for million dollar+ transactions are the norm. Seems like a real enabler in those spaces?

[jeremyjh]

If you want to send wires via an API you get a bank account, you don't build your own bank with legos.