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Comment by mbesto | Hacker News Reader

> Sabre does 3.87B in revenue and Duffel is just re-inventing Sabre with a better suite of APIs. What other legacy enterprise, vertical software solutions exist that people could "Duffel?"

I could enumerate 100's of these problems, but this really isn't the right question to ask. The only reason this startup is possible is because the IATA allowed them to be. So perhaps the question should be "how many industries are ready to standardize their communication protocols via modern APIs?"

Great example - providing a unified banking API is clearly a multi-billion dollar a year business. But it requires the network effect of all of the banks to be involved. This either happens via industry groups or via regulation.

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This is the essential issue with the travel industry. The data, and especially integration with the GDS's themselves is tightly controlled.

I've had many an idea for travel startups but data has been a non-starter.

I give Duffel props for having the mojo/influence/connections/funding to successfully implement something like this in an industry that has had few players. The only one I can think of is ITA but they are no longer independent.

From what I understand, Duffel are connecting to NDC APIs exposed by the airlines (or rather, by the Airlines' IT provider, i.e. Sabre and Amadeus... but that's another story). And on top of that, they expose a nice REST API (that is very similar in philosophy and structure to the NDC XML - Offer, Order). This is a win for the airlines, because every booking through Duffel is a booking without paying the GDS tax

I was wondering why it was only a handful of airlines! Thanks for the insight.

> banking API is clearly a multi-billion dollar a year business

Why?

AFAIK most big banks have APIs, and it would seem to me the use cases for needing to access an account programmatically are few.

On the consumer banking side I would agree with you, not many individuals have complex enough banking needs where programmatic access would be a value-add. However if you look at businesses, any company doing more than (let's say) 50 bank-to-bank payments a month I think would benefit from being able to automate their bank account interactions in some fashion.

Disclosure: I work on banking APIs

And I would humbly ask for someone to think again about the regular people on a more pragmatic or tech-savvy end. My banking is relatively simple, and yet many of my needs are not covered by any existing solutions. The absolute basics I want is an API access to my current per-account balance. Another step would be programmatic access to per-account transaction history.

I don't want to use banking apps and sites daily, they all offer garbage UX that's designed for upselling credit cards, consumer loans and other financial product. What I want is simple API access. I can take it from there, and do a better job than banks do, because my own incentives align better with my own interest.

1. Most big banks require a ton of red tape to use those APIs. Even if you're using modern technology with a top tier dev team, this is still a 4-6 week endeavor at its absolute quickest turnaround.

2. All ACH transfers, for example, have to clear the Fed, which is done via FTP.

3. The consumer use cases are endless (make payments, analytics, etc). Just look at Mint, Truebill, etc.

4. The commercial user cases are endless (treasury management, AP, AR, etc).

(Disclosure: I'm the CEO of Duffel) Totally agree with your point above re: IATA. They made it possible but for a different reason, they opened the door to competition.

Standardisation of communication protocol can only do so much, especially when the standard is built to accommodate the needs of 100s of airlines using 100s of different host systems.

Also, there is ton of red tape around airlines' APIs as well, I'd say probably as much as in banking.

FTP? I hope at least FTPS.

I mean I feel like "need" is a bad choice, when the point is that it can be a lot better. I didn't need Venmo to send money to friends, but it is quite clearly better than pre-existing options. Also there are plenty of shitty banks out there with their own insular network and plenty of money they are working with. What options do you have in the Middle East per say?

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