Tracking transaction data from credit card, any API?

Question

I am required to create an application which collects transaction details of bank accounts, there are APIs like

• Plaid
• Yodlee
• Geezeo

But these APIs make use of the clients username and password for retrieving the transaction data, but in my case I need to do so using only the credit card number.

Can it even be done?

Is there any other APIs that provide this functionality?

I have researched about this issue a lot but still can't seem to find any APIs that suits the requirement. Any help is appreciated, Thank you.

Answer 1

I just answered essentially this question for another user (Serizawa Sanjay), here is my response below:

" I have worked for Credit Unions that have experience with all these types of APIs. The Geezeo and the Yodlee API will not allow you to do what you want since that would violate the privacy on the card and the card issuers will not allow someone outside of the flow of approvals to get to that data. There are a few APIs that you can get by working with partners like FirstData to look for a certain type of transaction or vendor that comes across their system if it matches a certain card number, but you have to be a key partner with FirstData, not an easy task.

As far as aggregating transaction data from accounts like credit cards, bank accounts, auto loans, mortgages, investment accounts and the like, you really want to be using an API like MoneyDesktop. Yodlee is good as well, it just does not have the coverage, uptime, or quality of data that MoneyDesktop has. Geezeo's API just does not have the critical features that a MoneyDesktop or Yodlee API has. First Geezeo does not do its own aggregation and it only has one partner to do their agg for them. Yodlee is only one source, but if there is a broken connection, at least they can control fixing it. If a connection goes down with Geezeo, there is nothing that Geezeo can do to fix it but wait for their aggregation provider to fix it. If your business, bank or credit union can't afford for aggregation to go down (reputation risk), you need someone like Yodlee that controls their own aggregation, or someone like MoneyDesktop that has many aggregation providers and can route between them the second that one of their connections has problems. Also, Yodlee and MoneyDesktop both do their own data cleansing and aggregation, where Geezeo does not and has to rely on their aggregation provider. This is extremely problematic because as users editing and input to the system as to the transaction being data cleansed incorrectly or categorized incorrectly is not taken into account properly or optimally.

I have also heard that Intuit Data Services has a good API as well, but I have never had any experience with it.

Good luck! "