Open Banking apps – what’s support like if something goes wrong?

roarrory33

I’m looking at using apps/services that connect to my bank account (Open Banking) to help manage money and avoid fees.

Before doing that, I’m wondering what happens if something stops working—like transactions not updating or payments failing.

In your experience, is customer support from these services usually responsive, or can it be hard to get help?

Just trying to avoid ending up stuck with something that doesn’t work properly.

eskbanker

You don't get customer support from services, you get it from companies, so you'd need to frame the question in terms of specific app suppliers and/or banks.

flaneurs_lobster

Open Banking (as in giving third parties the ability to "pull" data/payments from your accounts) is under the control of (and paid for) by the entity that takes the data/payments.

You would have no relationship with the actual providers of the technical infrastructure that facilitates such movements. You would have to address any failures with the institution making the request.

Think of it like making a Faster Payment, you instruct your bank, your bank uses their relationship with the provider of faster payments (Pay.UK) to instruct a movement to the account of your payee. If that doesn't work then you would contact your bank, not Pay.UK.

golfplayer224

In my experience, support quality varies much more by the company using Open Banking than by Open Banking itself.

Some apps are very responsive when connections break or transactions stop syncing, others can take days to reply which gets frustrating quickly if you rely on the app for budgeting or payments.

One thing I’d check before signing up is whether they clearly explain:

• who to contact if something fails
• how often account connections refresh
• what happens if a bank connection expires

I’ve generally had better experiences with services using established providers/infrastructure (for example Plaid or Finexer Open Banking integrations) because connection handling tends to be more stable, but the customer support still comes from the app you signed up with, not the Open Banking provider behind the scenes.

flaneurs_lobster

I’ve generally had better experiences with services using established providers/infrastructure (for example Plaid or !!!!!! Open Banking integrations)

I need to know what that rude word is!

golfplayer224

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81981666#Comment_81981666

I actually mentioned another open banking provider that we've worked with but I wonder why it was censored. The provider was Finexer.

golfplayer224

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81991557#Comment_81991557

Oh my god, its happened again. The provider is F!inexer.

flaneurs_lobster

Finexer is a rude word?

EDIT : Yep apparently so.

eskbanker

Out of curiosity, I've asked about this over on this thread:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6667473/censorship-of-proscribed-words

masonic

Perhaps we're all just behind the times and don't know what a !!!!!! is in slang terms. It does sound rather filthy 😂

friolento

I don't get it 😒