this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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What's stopping banks from creating FOSS (or atleast open-source) banking solutions (apps)? (fost.hu)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Let's say, I create a bank with the caveat that all of my banking phone apps and webapps are FOSS (or if they depend on non-free components — banks probably do to communicate with each other —, then just OSS). Am I going to be behind the competition by doing this?

If the most secure crypto algorithms are the ones that are public, can we ensure the security of a bank's apps by publicizing it?

Are they not doing this because they secretly collect a lot of data (on top of your payment history because of the centralized nature of card payments) through these apps?

EDIT: Clarifying question: Is there a technical reason they don't publicize their code or is it just purely corporate greed and nothing else?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't know of anything stopping banks from creating FOSS apps, but since it's not their area of expertise, I think they're more likely to license an app from a provider, and existing providers don't have a compelling incentive to open-source their apps.

If we want FOSS banking apps, I think the first and most important step would be legally requiring banks to provide standard APIs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

If we want FOSS banking apps, I think the first and most important step would be legally requiring banks to provide standard APIs.

Germany supposedly has an open standard banking API. I don’t know if it’s legally mandated but in principle its mere existence and acceptance by some banks would theoretically be sufficient to inspire FOSS apps. I vaguely recall that GNU Cash recognizes that standard.. can anyone confirm?

I don’t think I’ve seen any portable FOSS banking apps for any country in the F-Droid official repos. Which suggests that a standard open API may not be sufficient. Or perhaps I have something wrong here.