Unvalidated Ideas #034
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Here's a fresh idea you can take out there and validate.
FedNow JSON API Appliance (🗒Raw Notes)
Have you heard of FedNow? It's an instant payments system that's due to launch in 2023.
Blockchain may get more headlines, but people overlook the Federal Reserve building a payments system to match that of European countries. It's going to be a game-changer for companies and consumers in the US.
As big stuffy applications often are, the FedNow API right now communicates over SOAP and XML. These technologies suck and are pretty terrible for modern development.
Having to write in SOAP/XML isn't an insurmountable task, but applciations can be built faster by a wider range of developers with a modern data exchange language like JSON.
This product likely needs to be self-hostable (regulatory requirements, security), but the great news is that banks are very happy to pay large sums to avoid development time and receive a pre-baked solution. With the emphasis on moving workloads to the cloud, you could even run it for them (in a linked VPC for example).
As far as the monetization goes, charging per transaction volume or per related account seem like natural ways to charge that grow with revenue processed by banks.
The market for this idea is large -- obviously every single system that's built on FedNow would benefit. There's a chance that your solution is added to FedNow or even amost always sold beside it, which would be a massive ongoing source of new customers.
NOTE: The FedNow space is fertile -- if the service is new to you, think about it some more!
What was in this week's uncut edition?
Like being teased? I hope so, because here's what was in the uncut edition this week:
Ideas:
- FedNow JSON API Appliance
- ████████████advertising█████
- AirBnB███████████████████
Bonus:
- Making it cheaper to build your startups.
Don't forget, there's always money in the banana stand 3x more in the uncut edition.
Thanks for reading!
If you liked this letter feel free to criticize, comment on, remix, and share these ideas with your fellow builders and entrepreneurs!
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Victor (victor@unvalidatedideas.com)
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