Why is it that banks are always 5 years behind when it comes to the internet?
For those not in ‘the know’, a ‘webhook’ is where you define a url ( or address ) you would like to be notified when certain things happen on a website you use.
As an example, you tell PayPal to notify your payment confirm url when your business account receives a payment. They then send the payment details to that url so an automated script can do something with them. Usually tell you to send the item they bought.
There are so many sites now creating api’s and allowing webhooks that the internet is starting to talk without the use of humans. You can tell one site to tell your site to tell a third site to do something.
So what about banking websites? Wouldn’t it be pretty cool if you could set up a webhook whenever your account received a payment, or went below a defined balance?
It would allow you to send texts to people as alerts, inform you it was ok to then pay another bill or even send an api call to another website to put a purchase into action.
The next stage for internet banking after that would be a simple api. A secure way for you to send bill payment requests, get the balance of an account without logging in, or adding a direct debit to the account.
The possibilities are pretty much endless, but the truth is that this stuff won’t come in for years, unless one forward thinking bank jumps first and wows the internet with such features.