Open banking

masonic

eskbanker wrote: »

Fair enough, I must concede that I haven't investigated actual offerings available in the market and agree that what you describe is insufficient granularity.

Are there any actual offerings available in the market? All those I've found turned out to be scrapers that didn't use Open Banking and required sharing my full logon information (and 2FA) to work.

I would just like to see all my accounts in one place without giving a provider full access to my online banking.

ozaz

Chino wrote: »

So, the question you need to ask yourself is, do I trust some new random start-up company that has no experience in securing customers' banking details - and is not only less than forthcoming in disclosing how it secures those details but could fold tomorrow and then who knows what happens with the customer banking data it has - with my banking details?

Only you know your answer to that question.

The firms who provide access to banks via open banking APIs are authorised by the FCA. So it is not only faith in the firm or start-up. Of course, it is up to you whether you place faith in the FCA's vetting and auditing procedures.

You can check if a firm has been authorised by the FCA here: https://www.openbanking.org.uk/customers/regulated-providers/

ozaz

masonic wrote: »

Are there any actual offerings available in the market? All those I've found turned out to be scrapers that didn't use Open Banking and required sharing my full logon information (and 2FA) to work.

I would just like to see all my accounts in one place without giving a provider full access to my online banking.

There are several that connect to some banks through open banking. Although I'm not sure there are any that connect only through open banking. This seems to be because the FCA recently extended the deadline up to which credential sharing (screen scrapping) was permitted. The blame here seems to lie with the banks, who did not get workable open banking APIs available in time.

I would suggest contacting the aggregator you are interested in and asking them which of their connections are available through open banking and which still rely on credential sharing.

In my opinion, the two biggest issues with open banking at the moment are
1. Banks dragging their heels in providing reliable open banking APIs (I am relying on what the third party providers are saying here).
2. Not all banks are providing access to savings accounts via their open banking APIs. They are not obliged to provide access to these types of accounts (they are only obliged to provide access to payment accounts) but it seems against the spirit of open banking to not provide access to these accounts. Because of this I expect some aggregators will continue to use credential sharing until they are forced not to.

masonic

ozaz wrote: »

I would suggest contacting the aggregator you are interested in and asking them which of their connections are available through open banking and which still rely on credential sharing.

It's easiest just to give them a try. I'm only really interested in my current accounts. It's pretty obvious that they are scraping when they require my full logon information. As I said, I've tried all the ones I am interested in and none of them use Open Banking, even for banks I know support it. At least one of them misled me into thinking that it did, I don't think they actually understood what I was asking, or didn't understand the difference between API access and scraping.

toib

Yolt is an app by ING, it allows you to add accounts from a large number of banks.
If you add an account via open banking then the validity of the access will last for 90 days, it will then have to be refreshed.

If you add an account via open banking it in no way gives any access to do anything other than what is specified, usually it is transaction/balances.

When you pay via open banking you only provide authorization for that specific transaction to that specific vendor/account. If a hostile actor was to intercept your web traffic there is very little that they could do. It is more secure than paying via entering your card details into a website.

After having worked for a TPP and ASPSP (credit card company) I have much stronger faith in the security of open banking than I do in making payments via the traditional method of entering card details to make payment.

sal_III

born_again wrote: »

eskbanker.


And how many people are actually going to limit that access, even if the app allows you to block certain types of information sharing.
The one I tried simply had "Do you agree to share your information with 3rd parties" No other option.
Got deleted straight off.

The whole idea of "Open Banking" is to allow 3rd parties access to your information so you can be offered better deals. Still your choice to take them up.


https://www.openbanking.org.uk/customers/what-is-open-banking

It doesn't work like that. Or at least it didn't with the 2 iOS apps and 1 web accounting portal I used it with. It can'r be buried in the T&C that everyone agrees to and no one (almost) reads.

You are taken to your bank website for verification and your bank explicitly states the type of access being granted and the period (usually limited to 3 months). This happened for all 4 (Starling, HSBC, Barclays and Nationwide) when I we setting up Open banking connections to them.

It's just a standardised improvement on existing tech that allowed 3rd parties electronic access to your banking. Focused on making it easier and more secure for the customers. There is nothing inherently bad/wrong about Open Banking.

As for use cases - I have 2. One is for my business bank accounts transactions to go straight into the accounting software and my accountant, saving me about 1-2h / month exporting and importing bank statements, with risk of missing a day/transaction and having to re-do it. The second is to get a one aggregated view of all the spending from the dozen current accounts and CCs between me and my wife. Which is very helpful when establishing where you spend your money at the end of the week/month/year etc. Again without the need to spend hours exporting and importing bank statements.

In both cases I would have been sharing the data with the 3rd parties one way or another. What Open Banking does is allowing me to do so easier and safer than previously possible.