Open Banking - a good or bad idea?

IronGiant

Which as you say is pertinent information from the bank, not a recommendation to utilise such a service.

Faust

I think the by us is the important bit.  So what they are saying is that they will be offering these new services, but if you use a third party app, you may be putting yourself at risk.

Jezza99

From what I can gather there will be a 'big push' to drive these new services in the next couple of months.  Fortunately you are not obliged to do anything if you don't wish too and that's all to the good because there's no way I will be signing up for said services.

At first I couldn't see the logic of these new services as how often would you need to transfer money between accounts, (which you can already do anyway from your online banking).

However, what's really behind it is that other banks will be able to offer the customer 'better deals' as they will be able to see your accounts from these third party apps.  So yet another 'poaching/selling opportunity for the financial sector.

Faust

As IG has pointed out, the services offered by the banks themselves will be secure. Those offered/pushed by third party services may well not be secure, and it is therefore caveat emptor.

Bl4ckGryph0n

From reading further certainly the circulars I have don't state 'the bank will offer the services' but they will only work with organisations that are part of the 'Open Banking Directory' which is regulated by the FCA.  There are however (the bank warns) some organisations that aren't part of the OBD and they won't share API's with these companies.

What in essence this new service will also do is when you purchase an item, the retailer will take the money directly from your account and bypass the current system of the transaction going through the banks systems.

Jezza99

Small disclaimer I do have a vested interest in this but can’t get into details yet before the news articles come out and patents and ITO is sorted.

Things is it will be inevitable, and it doesn’t have to be insecure at all. But the key point is it is inevitable. This level of transparency and openness will go everywhere. And actually in some other countries it is already there. There are big disrupters on the Russian market who have been doing this.

I understand people will be looking at it with some suspicion, but ultimate I will regard the changes that are happening as so much more secure than what we have today. Why, I don’t trust people

Bl4ckGryph0n

There will always be suspicions about new technology. I know people who will not trust contactless cards, personally I think they are great.

krish

Agreed. Personally I’d rather handover my contactless card to Apple who then don’t actually handover the card but simply a token. Nobody actually exchanges my card details. And that is a big hint to one of the mechanisms. Also the reason why Apple Pay is not limited to the contactless payment limits

Faust

I started this GC thread a few weeks ago:
Banks warn customers not to give details to budgeting appsPresumably those T&Cs are being revised to accomodate open banking - much has been written about HSBC's forthcoming 'Beta' app.

krish

Or indeed Android Pay which generates a pseudo card number for each transaction which is then digitally shredded.

However, I see little value in some third party having access to all my bank accounts passwords.

As it stands I can go online and complete any transfers myself without the introduction of a third party.