Show HN: Astra – Virtual Sub Accounts for your existing bank accounts
astra.financeHi Hackernews, Gil here, co-founder at Astra. Would love to hear what you think about this new technical architecture for your bank accounts! With Virtual Sub Accounts, you can partition your cash or give your dollars purpose – and you can transfer funds to and from those virtual accounts with programmable routines.
I don't want to give anyone my real account info which is why I rarely set up auto pay on anything. If you had a feature where we could generate multiple virtual bank account numbers (ACH ready) that could be linked to 3rd parties AND be revoked at will on your site - that would be something I would pay for. Can you imagine what a company like Comcast would do with your account info when you try to quit them? They'd probably bill you forever and then force you to ask for a refund every month. BUT with a virtual account number you can put the power back in your own hands.
The virtual accounts as they are offered now don't really offer me any benefits.
Thanks for the feedback!
Our Virtual Accounts are the first step towards exactly that – we were thinking that virtual debit numbers tied to virtual accounts might make the most sense from a payment flow perspective. And that would allow you to do just what you described, provided the payment recipient takes debit vs ACH. Having virtual account/routing numbers would be a great extension of that capability too!
I must be a dying breed but I will never give any external service access to my bank account. And I still remember the days where you actually had piece of software to run locally for such things. Crazy eh.
Curious, what's the reason? Security? Do you have all of your accounts at one bank?
Yes, security/privacy. Banks are heavily regulated, and "I can't avoid them to store my data" anyway. (I do mostly use cash, much to the irritation of shops these days.) I have multiple accounts, which I manage offline without giving any third-party service access to them. The transaction data for my bank accounts is not very interesting thanks to me doing most things in cash. I don't need banks (or credit card companies), tax authorities or tax advisors to know how I spend my money, where I eat, what kind of services I enjoy.
I would however have an interest in some of what these fancy new "let us have access to your account" companies are offering. If it was simply software to use 'offline'.
Gotcha. IMHO, cash provides a number of functions where f(x) = security, privacy, or physical partitioning. And those are valuable!
For functions where f(x) is something one would want to program or automate in the digital realm of money, that's where we hope to add value to the experience of managing your finances.