When did First Direct stop the facility to log onto several bank accounts with one password?

sparkiemalarkie

Hi, I'm trying to discover when First direct stopped the service of allowing you to sign into all your bank accounts with one set of login details ( I can't even remember what it was called)
Can anyone remember which date this service was removed please?

tia

sx

eskbanker

https://www1.firstdirect.com/banking/ways-to-bank/internet-banking-plus/

Internet Banking Plus is no longer available

We’re starting work to move some of its best features into the first direct Mobile App.

The first step of this was to close down the Internet Banking Plus service on 26 August 2019.

sparkiemalarkie

Thank you so much...I have spent nearly 1.5 hours trying to find this info...
I would never have found it!
Thanks for taking the time to look it up and pass it on

sx

eskbanker

sparkiemalarkie said:

Thank you so much...I have spent nearly 1.5 hours trying to find this info...
I would never have found it!
Thanks for taking the time to look it up and pass it on

sx

No problem, but out of curiosity, what will you now do with that information?!

Daliah

sparkiemalarkie said:

Hi, I'm trying to discover when First direct stopped the service of allowing you to sign into all your bank accounts with one set of login details ( I can't even remember what it was called)
Can anyone remember which date this service was removed please?

tia

sx

FD never provided a service that allowed you sign into all your bank accounts with one set of login details.

What they did offer was a means of storing all your login details for a large number of banks, building societies and investment platforms. This information was kept in an encrypted form on your PC/laptop, and was protected with a single userid and password. A single click on a bank's name used the stored login details to log you into the respective online banking. They also displayed the most current balance of each of your accounts without having to login, in a simple, uncluttered, list form.

FD's service was a badged version of AccountUnity by ewise, which was a superb account aggregator. Unfortunately, first 2FA and later also Open Banking rendered it useless for the UK. I believe it is still in use in other parts of the world. None of the new generation of account aggregators has come even close to the functionality we sadly can't have any longer in the UK.

sparkiemalarkie

eskbanker said:

sparkiemalarkie said:

Thank you so much...I have spent nearly 1.5 hours trying to find this info...
I would never have found it!
Thanks for taking the time to look it up and pass it on

sx

No problem, but out of curiosity, what will you now do with that information?!

I took a screen shot or photo of the landing page showing all the bank accounts I had at the time......
I wanted to track down the screen shot/photo as I wanted some of the info.....
I had no idea of where to start looking so have scrolled through all my photos knowing that I had missed it.
I decided I would have more luck finding it if I knew, at least,  what year it closed.
I will start again after dinner!
Thanks for the help

sx

double_dutchy

Daliah said:

FD's service was a badged version of AccountUnity by ewise, which was a superb account aggregator.....

Yes, I used Accountunity for many years - as well as bank accounts you could also get some other accounts e.g. utilities. I thought it was fantastic and I never had any security issues. The software was a bit outdated though, the last time I used it they were still based on IE6 or something similar!

I notice that some banking apps allow you to use Open banking to view other accounts, e.g. Natwest lets me see other current account balances

Daliah

double_dutchy said:

I notice that some banking apps allow you to use Open banking to view other accounts, e.g. Natwest lets me see other current account balances

yes, nearly all banks offer this now - great for them to snoop into your personal finances without needing to ask for extra permission (as you have already given it to them). There are also some independent account aggregators, but neither they nor the banks have anything like the functionality we had with AccountUnity. It was brilliant for many years but they stopped maintaining it when it became clear that 2FA and Open Banking would kill it, so it became more and more unusable until they finally withdrew it entirely from the UK market.

RG2015

Daliah said:

double_dutchy said:

I notice that some banking apps allow you to use Open banking to view other accounts, e.g. Natwest lets me see other current account balances

yes, nearly all banks offer this now - great for them to snoop into your personal finances without needing to ask for extra permission (as you have already given it to them). There are also some independent account aggregators, but neither they nor the banks have anything like the functionality we had with AccountUnity. It was brilliant for many years but they stopped maintaining it when it became clear that 2FA and Open Banking would kill it, so it became more and more unusable until they finally withdrew it entirely from the UK market.

Is this tongue-in-cheek, or do you believe that banks will be snooping into their customers’ personal finances?

Daliah

By using the aggregation facilities, you specifically authorise that the aggregator can see all the transaction details in the accounts you want to see in one place. The authorisation lasts for 3 months at a time unless you remove it. Renewing the authorisation before it expires is easy.

Aggregators can be banks, personal finance managers or credit reference agencies. All of them can, and in many cases will, use your data to market products to you. 

The same applies if you authorise a company to pull money from your account using Open Banking, either as ad hoc or as regular transactions. Examples are Plum, Tandem and Tesco Clubcard Pay+. For the convenience of transferring money by not having to make payments using a sort code and account number, you are giving up the privacy of your current account(s). 

The rights you give the 3rd parties are detailed in T&Cs that you agree to when setting up the aggregation or money transfer authorisations.

RG2015

Thanks @Daliah ,

So you are in no doubt that the banks are using open banking to “snoop” on customers specifically to target them for marketing purposes