Several bank accounts on one app?

Sunshine_and_Roses

I have current and savings accounts with several banks including Santander, Halifax, Lloyds and Virgin.  I believe I can link these together on an app so I can see a total in real time.  Is this safe, and would this be through each bank?

Daliah

"Open Banking" technology will allow you to view all your accounts from within the app of one of them. You have to authorise the app / the bank to access your other account(s), and you need to renew the authorisation every 90 days. During that time, you have authorised the bank which aggregates your accounts to look at your transactions etc at the other bank.

You can also use one of the budgeting apps / personal finance manager apps to see all your current accounts, as well as many savings and some investment accounts.They follow the same principle as banks ref authorisation / renewal of authorisation. They have the advantage that you don't loose your aggregation in the event that you change banks. They will, like banks, also be entitled to look at your transactions etc.

Only companies which have implemented Open Banking can participate in these aggregations. Many, mainly smaller, building societies don't participate, and may never do so. Similar for some investment platforms, and I don't think accounts through the likes of Raisin or HL Active Savings are covered. 

Last time I had a play with some of these apps, they were all treacle slow. It's probably ok if you have no more than half a dozen or so accounts, all with the main current account providers but as soon as you have more, or use companies such as Coventry Building Society or Marcus etc, you can't see all your accounts in one place.

I don't think you need to have any safety concerns but whether you are ok with lifting a substantial part of your privacy is a very different matter. Personally, I don't use any of the aggregation functionality as I have not found any of these apps to cover all the accounts I have. If I were to use any of them, I would probably opt for one the budgeting apps as I don't like to be tied to one bank.

If you wanted to see the same accounts in all your banking apps, you would have to authorise/renew the authorisations in each of the banking apps.

If you are very interested in the functionality, if you don't mind if a bank can snoop on your accounts you hold elsewhere, and if you don't mind the maintenance and the slow loading, the best way to find out whether this is for you is to try it out.

Daliah

NB. You mention Virgin. IIRC, only the Virgin M accounts work with Open Banking. Their Regular Savers don't. Obviously not an issue if you don't have any of these.

I am also not certain whether credit cards are now covered.