How are programs like accelerating access to financial institution data?

Question

Basically, I like the idea of ​​managing my money and finances, but I would like to create software that is tuned to the way I manage my money. Quicken and Microsoft Money and the like offer good solutions, but not quite what I want.

I am curious how these applications can extract data from my financial institutions. I can not find the API to get my data from Bank of America, Chase, etc.

How exactly do they do it?

Answer 1

This is not a bank that has an API, but is accelerating. Over the years, Intuit has published a number of specialized APIs to which banks correspond. The standard is an open standard, so other programs, such as Microsoft Money, can use the same format for downloading data. Here are some links, the Open Financial Interchange Format is the new standard that everyone uses, the Quicken Interchange Format is old.