Desktop Alternative to FirstDirect "Internet Banking Plus"

colsten wrote: »

A bit of a moot point but eWise are the technology provider for FD IP, not the other way round. The native eWise provides many more accounts than FD have chosen to implement. eWise has obviously similar shortfalls as FD IP has but at least you can get them to fix things a little faster. It's all become rather tedious now.

Yeah, I realise eWise are the creators, not First Direct. FD have had me go to eWise's support page to do some troubleshooting a few times, without much success. Egg actually had the identical program too, at one point, but the skin was pretty ugly and it died a death along with Egg, or possibly even before.

I searched for eWise earlier and they seem to have evolved into a smart US-based company who make very sexy-looking apps that do exactly what we need, but sadly they don't appear to be available to us plebs, as they market their software directly to other companies only. Not sure who these other companies might be, but none of them can be in the UK, that's for sure. I was slightly puzzled, as I know eWise were originally based in Australia, but I can't see there being two companies with the same name selling the same(ish) niche product.

Anyway, I've just spent half a day adding accounts to Money Dashboard, which has gone very slowly, and some organisations just won't connect at all. It also turns out that they have even fewer organisations for me to add than First Direct. I think I might take up your suggestion and look at eWise again via the Accountunity link, and not do any more googling, as if I see any more pictures of those perfect-looking apps it will only make me cry!

I'd read on MSE somewhere recently that the screen scraping option as used in FDs internet banking plus is to stop in September 2019, so who knows what the future will bring with it.

I hadn't heard about that. First Direct keep telling me they have no plans to stop supporting Internet Banking Plus, so I'm guessing that if that's the case, they simply haven't told their staff yet. I'll be a very unhappy bunny if that happens.

Not heard of Emma, but will see what I can find on it. *ever hopeful*

I use Internet Banking Plus and it has become buggy. Hopefully something better will come out. I would happily pay for a decent version.

However with all the interest rates dropping I'm going to look to simplify things so won't have so many accounts.

Marigold123 wrote: »

I think once I can get all my accounts loaded into Money Dashboard it will be OK, though I'll try Yolt too, and see which works best for me. I don't mind running two systems alongside each other, (ie. an app for updating balances, and IB Plus as a portal if I need to go somewhere). Anything that means it doesn't take me forever to get my balances!

I like that MD has a desktop and app interface, but i've always found it a bit slow at updating certain accounts automatically. I could never find away to do a mass refresh, so you had to click refresh on each individual account, which then didn't allow you to do anything else in the app until it'd refreshed.

Yolt has a refresh on startup option which auto updates all balances and a quick pull down of the app screen to refresh too. It's tagging categorisations aren't as comprehensive as those in MD, and, sadly, there's no desktop option.

:beer::beer:

Nightvision, I am pretty sure it is going to die, and probably quite soon. I have been using it since it first came out, and the list of organisations not working is getting longer and longer, and the time taken to fix them is increasing all the time. It's partly because organisations update their websites more frequently, but also because there is simply nothing in it for anyone to keep maintaining the program, past keeping the very few old customers using it moderately happy. From what I can tell there are just a couple of hundred people in the country who use IBP. It's never been a very high number, but I think more and more people are ditching it in favour of apps. Probably because they work, (for most people's needs), and it only barely does now.

The company who originally created it have moved on to much more profitable things, and only seem to be maintaining it as a legacy program now. The only browser it will work in, IE, is also a legacy program, no longer supported by Microsoft, and becomes more unusable with every passing month.

There is also the spectre of this new legislation looming, which many interpret as ending the legality of screen scraping, which is the process used by IBP to obtain balances. I have seen emails from at least one organisation saying the only third party access they will now allow to their accounts is via Open Banking, which doesn't allow functional access to the account itself, only sight of the balance and transactions. I have tried multiple times to ask FD's technical team whether the legislation will end IBP, but still cannot get anything out of them about it. The only reply they will give is that they have been given no information about it, and that customers will be informed if there are any changes.

All FD seem interested in at the moment is what sounds to be a radical updating of their website, and their new, ghastly and irritating hold 'music' of birds singing, traffic noise and ice cream vans, which I have to hold away from my ear if I'm contacting them by phone. I've always had great respect for First Direct, but their obsession with trying to appear 'different' just for the sake of it has been a bit of a negative in the last few years, as far as I am concerned.

I am currently using a combination of IBP and Money Dashboard, which seems to be improving, and updates many organisations automatically in the background, (although, it appears, on a completely random basis, and some occasionally won't update manually at all, so I wouldn't want to rely on it alone). I have a current total of 6 organisations which are 'broken' on IBP, (including FD itself!) and one which is effectively useless due to the login process used. This same organisation is also currently broken on MDB.

If nothing else, I will continue to use IBP as a login portal, as there's no other tool that will do this. If it dies completely I will just have to make myself a dedicated favourites folder and use that instead, with MDB for my balances and balance sheet function, plus apps for fast and nasty access when I don't need any higher functions.

I am still toying with the idea of using the HSBC app and adding other organisations, as someone here mentioned, but I find it fiddly and hate using it, so it's unlikely to become my go-to daily banking app. I haven't tried the FD app yet, which I believe works in a similar way, but I hate all the extra authentication, and would just love IPB to do what it used to do so well, and just bl**dy work! Sadly, I think those days are gone. It's the only example I can think of in the last 20 years where the usefulness of technology has actually gone backwards, and we've lost something which nobody else is doing better.