Open Banking

kuratowski

Back on topic, I believe the current roll out (only current accounts) severely limits the usefulness of open banking as a way to view all your finances in one place. AIUI the extension to credit cards is planned, but as only the major banks, not all providers, are required to support the API, again this won't be comprehensive enough for most people. Like the OP, I've got used to manually entering all my transactions into finance software, which includes ALL my accounts, so unless or until open banking supports 100% of providers, it'll be less good for me than what I do already, meaning I won't get the benefit.

The way I read the sales pitch from the FCA, I think they don't yet know what the "killer app" from open banking will be, and they are hoping innovation in the market will take place to invent something really truly useful, leveraging open banking, that everyone will want to use, but they have no concrete idea what that could be. Until then, it's a bit of a white elephant IMHO.

Anthorn

masonic wrote: »

If you went to get information from various different places and then summarised it in one place, then you'd be aggregating it. You'd still be aggregating it if you connected to SQL databases and ran several queries to obtain the data directly, or phoned up the company holding the information and transcribed it over the phone.

You seem to be confusing aggregating with scraping. The Open Banking API prevents the need to scrape information from the webpages.

Read my revision to the post you quoted which clarifies my point but does not add to it.

We are discussing Open Banking and not engaging in verbal juggling. The current Open Banking APIs we have are different to the original aggregators we used to have and that's my point and my objection.

There used to be a debate about data scraping from web pages versus logging in with the user login which was used by those companies which accessed data from primarily financial services by logging in with the user login. In a nutshell they said they only scraped the data and didn't access any other other user data. But that was based primarily on trust. The Open Banking regulations and APIs changed that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_scraping

masonic

Anthorn wrote: »

Read my revision to the post you quoted which clarifies my point but does not add to it.

We are discussing Open Banking and not engaging in verbal juggling. The current Open Banking APIs we have are different to the original aggregators we used to have and that's my point and my objection.

There used to be a debate about data scraping from web pages versus logging in with the user login which was used by those companies which accessed data from primarily financial services by logging in with the user login. In a nutshell they said they only scraped the data and didn't access any other other user data. But that was based primarily on trust. The Open Banking regulations and APIs changed that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_scraping

Nothing you've written changes the accepted definition of 'aggregator'. I agree that you should not engage in verbal juggling, such as coming up with your own definitions of words that have accepted meanings and have been used correctly by others, even if you want to create a distinction between two groups of item that both can be defined as aggregators.

If you want to come up with a new way to describe the sub-class of aggregators that don't scrape data, then feel free. But what you cannot do is say that they are not aggregators, because, by definition, they are. Well you can do that, because you are Anthorn, but it's wrong to do so.

Those are going to be my final words on the matter. I think I've given you enough free reading comprehension lessons over the years.

Anthorn

kuratowski wrote: »

Back on topic, I believe the current roll out (only current accounts) severely limits the usefulness of open banking as a way to view all your finances in one place. AIUI the extension to credit cards is planned, but as only the major banks, not all providers, are required to support the API, again this won't be comprehensive enough for most people. Like the OP, I've got used to manually entering all my transactions into finance software, which includes ALL my accounts, so unless or until open banking supports 100% of providers, it'll be less good for me than what I do already, meaning I won't get the benefit.

The way I read the sales pitch from the FCA, I think they don't yet know what the "killer app" from open banking will be, and they are hoping innovation in the market will take place to invent something really truly useful, leveraging open banking, that everyone will want to use, but they have no concrete idea what that could be. Until then, it's a bit of a white elephant IMHO.

As far as I can see we haven't left the topic.

The "Killer App" does not / will not come from Open Banking but from third parties which use the Open Banking API(s) and this is a major misunderstanding: Open Banking provides the means to access the data for third party companies while providing control for the user and that's the main purpose of Open Banking.

Well yes, the current major problem with Apps such as budgeting apps is that they do not currently access all banks and credit card providers. The effect of that is that they publish a list of those financial institutions they do support. But that will probably rub off onto the financial institutions: For example how many people will switch a bank just because it's not supported by a certain budgeting app?

SnowTiger

Anthorn wrote: »

There used to be a debate about data scraping from web pages versus logging in with the user login which was used by those companies which accessed data from primarily financial services by logging in with the user login. In a nutshell they said they only scraped the data and didn't access any other other user data. But that was based primarily on trust. The Open Banking regulations and APIs changed that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_scraping

Yolt still performs data scraping for the majority of financial institutions it supports.

I still don't know why you think Yolt isn't an aggregator or what prompted you to repond "Re. Yolt not true." to something I wrote.

Oxford Dictionaries defines 'aggregator' as:

A website or program that collects related items of content and displays them or links to them.

You disagree?

18cc

Yes one of the 'benefits' of open banking is that when you apply for any form of credit for example a mortgage, credit card or a loan the institution will ask for the last 12 months access via the API to all your bank accounts

they will then check if you have been spending wisely - eg there any Starbucks coffees, avocado on toasts, gambling transactions or bitcoin trading for example!

Although I suppose in some ways it is no different from having to provide the last 12 months bank statements in paper format

jimjames

jimbo26 wrote: »

I get it isn't identifiable, but still uneasy giving companies access to my bank accounts. I still don't get the benefit, what's in it for the customer?I'm assuming nothing really at the moment, but this may change in the future if developers get on board.

Being able to see the balance of all my accounts in one place would be a really useful feature to save logging in to 6 different apps.

Anthorn

18cc wrote: »

Yes one of the 'benefits' of open banking is that when you apply for any form of credit for example a mortgage, credit card or a loan the institution will ask for the last 12 months access via the API to all your bank accounts

they will then check if you have been spending wisely - eg there any Starbucks coffees, avocado on toasts, gambling transactions or bitcoin trading for example!

Although I suppose in some ways it is no different from having to provide the last 12 months bank statements in paper format

Not true: No-one can access your data without your permission. If you believe what you posted to be true then post your evidence.

mije1983

18cc wrote: »

Yes one of the 'benefits' of open banking is that when you apply for any form of credit for example a mortgage, credit card or a loan the institution will ask for the last 12 months access via the API to all your bank accounts

they will then check if you have been spending wisely - eg there any Starbucks coffees, avocado on toasts, gambling transactions or bitcoin trading for example!

Although I suppose in some ways it is no different from having to provide the last 12 months bank statements in paper format

Anthorn wrote: »

Not true: No-one can access your data without your permission. If you believe what you posted to be true then post your evidence.

Not sure if you quoted the wrong post, but nowhere in 18cc's post that you did quote, did they say that data can be accessed without permission.

Anthorn

mije1983 wrote: »

Not sure if you quoted the wrong post, but nowhere in 18cc's post that you did quote, did they say that data can be accessed without permission.

I asked for evidence of what was posted. Personally, I would have thought that any lender which requires 12 months access to bank accounts via Open Banking would not have gone unnoticed and therefore evidence of it must exist. I can't find that evidence so it's over to the original poster.

If anyone doesn't want to take part in Open Banking all they need to do or rather not do is not authorise an app or a website to use it. Very simple really. Open Banking is not compulsory!