They seem to have bought Northern California National Bank in Chico, CA.[1] The Column web site doesn't mention it, but they still have a physical branch in Chico.
The FDIC gives their web site as "norcalbank.com", although it does show the name change to Column. Their site has no street address and "domain name only" TLS certificate from Amazon, so you don't really know for sure that column.com is connected to a real bank.
The terms[2] are very unfavorable to the customer, especially for a business which claims to be a real bank.
"THE MAXIMUM AGGREGATE LIABILITY OF BANK AND ITS AFFILIATES, AND ITS AND THEIR LICENSORS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS, FOR ALL DAMAGES, LOSSES, AND CAUSES OF ACTION, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE) OR OTHERWISE, WILL BE TEN U.S. DOLLARS ($10.00)."
There's an arbitration clause, and they demand to use JAMS, which is not as well thought of as the American Arbitration Association. "To reduce the time and expense of the arbitration, the arbitrator will not provide a statement of reasons for his or her award unless requested to do so by all Parties."
This is about the level of legitimacy one sees with the typical crypto operation. If you lose money through an error at their end, they don't have much of an incentive to fix the problem.
Banking is highly regulated at both the state and federal levels, it astounds me that they're able to have such a blatantly consumer hostile clause in their terms. Either this is plainly unenforceable (which happens and companies do all the time), or it is illegal and will get them a fat fine (seems unlikely though), or we live in a dystopian-Randian hellscape (most likely).
> "THE MAXIMUM AGGREGATE LIABILITY OF BANK AND ITS AFFILIATES, AND ITS AND THEIR LICENSORS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS, FOR ALL DAMAGES, LOSSES, AND CAUSES OF ACTION, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE) OR OTHERWISE, WILL BE TEN U.S. DOLLARS ($10.00)."
Got to love agreeing to online contracts where it's not possible to make any changes! That said, isn't this a case where the FDIC steps in and restores a decent chunk of your account if the bank screws up?
That's an interesting question... for a lot of fintechs that "wrap" banks in a unified API, if something goes wrong on the app side the bank is not going to be liable. This is a bit different since they are actually the bank themselves.
> This is about the level of legitimacy one sees with the typical crypto operation.
Ironically, one that will probably not be willing to take the compliance risks of working with all the developers who are doing crypto operations, given how much they have to lose after investing in this bank and messing up AML.
They could carve a lucrative niche for themselves though, this looks slightly more competitive than the state-sponsored crypto banks in Wyoming for the customer. Unless something goes wrong.
An API which allows fast transfers any time of the day or night from your business deposit account to anyone in the world, using a wide variety of money transfer systems, and with little recourse if there's a problem or fraud. What could possibly go wrong?
They seem to have bought Northern California National Bank in Chico, CA.[1] The Column web site doesn't mention it, but they still have a physical branch in Chico.
The FDIC gives their web site as "norcalbank.com", although it does show the name change to Column. Their site has no street address and "domain name only" TLS certificate from Amazon, so you don't really know for sure that column.com is connected to a real bank.
The terms[2] are very unfavorable to the customer, especially for a business which claims to be a real bank.
"THE MAXIMUM AGGREGATE LIABILITY OF BANK AND ITS AFFILIATES, AND ITS AND THEIR LICENSORS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS, FOR ALL DAMAGES, LOSSES, AND CAUSES OF ACTION, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE) OR OTHERWISE, WILL BE TEN U.S. DOLLARS ($10.00)."
There's an arbitration clause, and they demand to use JAMS, which is not as well thought of as the American Arbitration Association. "To reduce the time and expense of the arbitration, the arbitrator will not provide a statement of reasons for his or her award unless requested to do so by all Parties."
This is about the level of legitimacy one sees with the typical crypto operation. If you lose money through an error at their end, they don't have much of an incentive to fix the problem.
[1] https://banks.data.fdic.gov/bankfind-suite/bankfind/details/...
[2] https://column.com/api-terms-of-service