Programmable Bank Account for Software Developers

Root is a programmable bank account for software developers that is designed to allow you to write code that can interact with all parts of your account. It’s aiming to officially launch in June of this year.

You will be able to extend your bank account by writing what they call, RootCode, which is JavaScript stored on their servers. If you’ve ever created a custom Zap with Zapier it looks similar to how that is done.

You may be wondering why this would be useful, and they’ve outlined a few examples of what you could do through custom code:

Custom notifications: You’re trying to cut back on how much you spend on coffee. So you write a bit of code to help you. Each time you buy a coffee you get a custom SMS notification that tells you how much money you’ve spent on coffee in the past week.

Savings card: You want to visit Thailand, but you’re struggling to save money for the trip. So you write some code that rounds up each card transaction you make to the nearest R5, and adds that to your savings account.

Budgeting: You’re trying to keep track of how much you spend week-on-week. So you write some code that sends your transaction data to Google Sheets, where you can create charts comparing your weekly spend.

Root is backed by Standard Bank South Africa and although it doesn’t specifically say, I assume you will need to from that country to use it. I love that they are making this, and I hope other banks follow their lead. For more information and to signup for the beta visit the Root website.