← Back to context

Comment by ryanjshaw

3 years ago

SMS integration is a lost opportunity in so many ways.

I wanted a no-code solution to push my bank-sent SMSs into a real-time transaction database. Apparently this is impossible on iOS, and on Android it's incredibly unreliable (IFTTT & Tasker keep getting shut down by the OS). Fortunately, before writing my own solution, I found messages.google.com/web. I have to scrape this, but that's simpler than maintaining an Android app.

Somehow, it's 2022 and if I want real-time banking information I have to write code to consume SMSs OR hand my banking credentials over to a third party to scrape my bank statements.

Have you tried Twilio or some similar SMS solution that doesn't involve your phone. Admittedly this costs money but potentially you could use a number there to consume everything.

Alternatively if you are in Europe/UK the openbanking API is quite widely used now

Why not scrape your bank directly? For semi-auto I used to use TamperMonkey to help turn a statement into a CSV if the bank didn’t have a download.