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UK's Open Banking to Launch on 13 January

openbanking.org.uk

31–40 of 113 posts

Re: UK's Open Banking to Launch on 13 January

#32
post #24
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't, at least, not yet - it asks for all the user login information including passwords and security numbers required for a normal login. Edit: And unfortunately, it doesn't seem even to have any intention of using it: https://twitter.com/stevegraham/status/951163378424217600

Teller is interesting; I have some reservations (mostly around the attitude they portray, which is a bit unprofessional) but they have a good vision. The downside is they are encouraging you to share passwords, as you say, which isn't driving the right customer behaviour. More critically; in about 18 months the PSD2 Secure Customer Authentication guidance comes into force and this sort of approach (sharing credential…

It's already against the typical bank's terms of service for a user to provide them.

Not to mention a silly thing to do. But the average user seems just blindly trusts these things - tools like 'You Need a Budget' ask for the same.

Re: UK's Open Banking to Launch on 13 January

#33

WTF? What is open about a system that only very few organisations can use? Imagine in the paper world, now you not only can ask the bank how much money you have, you can also authorize other companies to look at your account statements for you ... but noone got the idea that maybe you, the account holder, should be able to get a copy of the account statements? It seems we are still at the "reading and writing is for…

Are you sure you can't? Besides the paper statements, I can download my transaction data in a variety of formats including CSV from every bank I've use in the Netherlands.

Re: UK's Open Banking to Launch on 13 January

#34
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at teller.io. I personally have some reservations, but you might like it.

Teller.io is not using the 'Open Banking' API - it asks for all the user login information including passwords and security numbers required for a normal login. Edit: And unfortunately, it doesn't seem even to have any intention of using it: https://twitter.com/stevegraham/status/951163378424217600

Good grief:

"A lot of people didn’t take us seriously, ignored us, bet on #OpenBanking instead. Look where we are now. We OWN the best access to the banking infra & everyone is else is out in the cold, totally fucked. When everyone thinks you’re right, you’re wrong. https://open.spotify.com/track/0whZQj81yqAv9yJEyNZcnR?si=TGr... "

Anyone fancy building their business on top of this attitude?

Re: UK's Open Banking to Launch on 13 January

#35
post #31
post #7

From what I understand the molasses IT departments in these banks will be delivering very little that actually works on Jan 13th but we will see...

Yeah. My impression of HSBC U.K.’s share trading platform was distinctly 1990 era.

In general I loathe HSBC globally. However, FWIW their HSBC UK higher end XML based credit card gateway was the bees knees in about 2009. Best I've seen in my career. Awesome individual fraud rule reporting, total control. We probably had the ass-kicking total package though as I was developing a pan-European solution for a major handset manufacturer.

Re: UK's Open Banking to Launch on 13 January

#36
post #28

WTF? What is open about a system that only very few organisations can use? Imagine in the paper world, now you not only can ask the bank how much money you have, you can also authorize other companies to look at your account statements for you ... but noone got the idea that maybe you, the account holder, should be able to get a copy of the account statements? It seems we are still at the "reading and writing is for…

Its a fair criticism in part; but you are a technologist and so want unfiltered access to play with that data. For the vast majority of people that's meaningless - so to be able to share that data with companies offering new and interesting services (AIS sign up is reasonably lightweight, certainly within trivial reach of any startup) is a big step forward. I think we should be encouraging! (Or in other words; your t…

Digital access to your data isn't likely to work out generally unless you're happy with "Here's a PDF sent to your email address" in which case, sure, that's going to happen.

I look after a system that has loads of PII, as a mix of traditional SQL databases and RDF with a bunch of RESTful service layers keeping it all in neat boxes so it's not a sprawling unmanageable mess.

Now, if you ask for Subject Access after our verification team is happy that you're who you say you are I can and will extract the data that's clearly about you from those sources, tart it up and reformat it, and shove that into a PDF you can have.

What I can't realistically do, even if they tried to legislate for it, is make say the RDF data structures somehow understandable to the lay person who thinks "graph" means "chart" and "a triple" is when you win three things in a row.

OpenBanking works because ultimately the banks are pretty interchangeable when it comes to ordinary personal accounts. Money comes in or out, there's some short half-arsed text saying why, an amount, it's a very regular structure. But imagine trying to build a single "digital access" that works for your Reddit posts, health records, grocery purchases, subscription to Playboy, and MetroCard account... what on Earth would the UX be for that?

Google gives us an idea what the best we could hope for is - if you sign in and say you want all your data, Google will ZIP it all up for you. But it's not a coherent system, it's just like somebody's old PC backup, a bunch of unrelated files in different formats in a ZIP file.

Re: UK's Open Banking to Launch on 13 January

#37

WTF? What is open about a system that only very few organisations can use? Imagine in the paper world, now you not only can ask the bank how much money you have, you can also authorize other companies to look at your account statements for you ... but noone got the idea that maybe you, the account holder, should be able to get a copy of the account statements? It seems we are still at the "reading and writing is for…

If you wanted to run a startup that ran APIs which bank customers could use this bill would presumably make that possible.

Re: UK's Open Banking to Launch on 13 January

#38
post #33

WTF? What is open about a system that only very few organisations can use? Imagine in the paper world, now you not only can ask the bank how much money you have, you can also authorize other companies to look at your account statements for you ... but noone got the idea that maybe you, the account holder, should be able to get a copy of the account statements? It seems we are still at the "reading and writing is for…

Are you sure you can't? Besides the paper statements, I can download my transaction data in a variety of formats including CSV from every bank I've use in the Netherlands.

The problem is that for a lot of banks there is no easy way to automate that process. I think 90 percent of use cases would be addressed simply by providing a way of giving automated read only access to statements.

Re: UK's Open Banking to Launch on 13 January

#40
post #32
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teller is interesting; I have some reservations (mostly around the attitude they portray, which is a bit unprofessional) but they have a good vision. The downside is they are encouraging you to share passwords, as you say, which isn't driving the right customer behaviour. More critically; in about 18 months the PSD2 Secure Customer Authentication guidance comes into force and this sort of approach (sharing credential…

It's already against the typical bank's terms of service for a user to provide them. Not to mention a silly thing to do. But the average user seems just blindly trusts these things - tools like 'You Need a Budget' ask for the same.

Founder here. This is incorrect. It is no longer against the terms of service of any European bank as of today thanks to PSD2.
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