The way you connect accounts in Money Dashboard has changed
When you log in to Money Dashboard you may notice that some of your accounts are no longer refreshing.
This is because as of 14th March, new legislation came into force to ensure that banks transitioned to providing access to your account information using Open Banking.
As with any ambitious technical project of this scale some of the banks have encountered problems with their implementation of the new data feeds and not all of them have Open Banking APIs in place yet. If your bank doesn’t yet offer a robust solution yet we won’t be able to support it after this date. In these instances you may experience some temporary disruption to receiving your data in Money Dashboard and it will show as ‘unsupported’ if you attempt to refresh it. We are sorry for any inconvenience this causes. Our team is working extremely hard to ensure you get the best coverage possible and we’re adding new connections all the time when they are made available by the banks.
- Where new connections are available we encourage you to update your details to ensure we can offer you the best service possible.
- Where your bank connection is not currently available we recommend leaving the account connected. You will be able to see all your historic transactions and our team will message you when an updated connection is provided.
A quick overview of Open Banking and PSD2
Payment Services Directive 2, (PSD2) is a piece of legislation that aims to open up the financial industry by requiring banks to make their APIs available to other financial institutions and Third Party Providers, like Money Dashboard. It was created to ensure a standard and secure way for financial institutions and services to connect to one another, to share data, and initiate and receive payments.
Open Banking is a phased implementation of this law. Under Open Banking, sharing your transaction information with third party companies will be made possible through APIs.
Short for application programming interface, APIs make it possible for the software at one company to access information from the software at another company.
Why is this relevant to you?
Money Dashboard has always been at the forefront of giving people a holistic view of their finances since 2010. As banks have made connections available via API we’ve been switching to these new connection types for newly added accounts.
We’ve also been phasing out the old connection types and offering our users the opportunity to ‘Switch to Open Banking’. This process cuts the old connection, makes a new connection via an Open Banking API and stitches together the data so you end up with a seamless transaction history; retaining all your historic information and giving you better access to data going forward.
If you have accounts still connected via the old method (credential sharing) you will need to switch by March 14th to keep your service uninterrupted.
From March 14th connections will only be possible in Money Dashboard via Open Banking
Open Banking gives you the fastest and most reliable way to connect your accounts to Money Dashboard and they are the future of banking as a whole. Money Dashboard has always been at the forefront of giving people a holistic view of their finances and we’re excited to be on this journey with you.
From March 14th we will no longer be supporting connections through ‘credential sharing’ and will only be supporting accounts on API. This is in line with the FCA rulings about account support for Open Banking.
As with any ambitious technical project of this scale some of the banks have encountered problems with their implementation of the new data feeds and not all of them have Open Banking APIs in place yet. If your bank doesn’t yet offer a robust solution yet we won’t be able to support it after this date. However, we’re working hard with the FCA and the banks to get them reconnected as soon as they make their APIs available.
What does this mean for me?
You might be impacted by these changes, or you might not notice any difference at all. It all comes down to which banks and accounts you’re using with Money Dashboard.
We’ve outlined three main scenarios below:
- Complete support: Your bank has APIs for all of your accounts and we’re able to connect them. Switch over any accounts to the new connection to retain your historic spend data and you’re good to carry on using this bank as normal.
- Partial support: Your bank has an API for some, but not all of your accounts. For example, some of the banks have APIs for their current accounts, but not for their savings accounts or credit cards. The banks determine what accounts they make available via the Open Banking APIs. Accounts covered by “PSD2” (legislation relating to payments accounts) which are basically any accounts that you can make payments from should be made available by your bank. For your Savings Accounts and other account types (e.g. Mortgages, ISAs etc) if you can make transactions from your account to another account not owned by you then it should also be available to switch to open banking. However, the majority of savings accounts will not appear via Open Banking. In this case, we recommend that you switch over any available accounts to the new connection. For accounts which aren’t supported, leave them linked to Money Dashboard to retain your historic spend data and we’ll let you know via email when new account connections are made available by your bank. You will then be able to add them as new, or connect up the records with your old account.
- Unsupported: Your bank doesn’t have an API available for any accounts. In this instance, your accounts will become static in Money Dashboard. Your transaction history will be retained, but no new information will appear on the account. We’ll let you know via email as and when we enable support on these accounts.
For accounts which aren’t supported, we recommend that you leave them linked to Money Dashboard to retain your historic spend data and we’ll let you know via email when new account connections are made available by your bank. You will then be able to add them as new, or connect up the records with your old account. Open Banking connections can offer up to 3 years worth of history so we will be able to backfill your transactions when your bank makes them available.
In the meantime you can also keep track of other accounts which are currently unsupported using our “offline account” feature.
We’re working hard to connect to more Banks
Open Banking APIs offer the best experience for our users, and we’re working hard behind the scenes to connect more accounts as and when their APIs become available.
We understand that moving fully to APIs may mean you’re unable to use Money Dashboard to track your spend for some of your accounts. If you keep these accounts connected in Money Dashboard we’ll notify you when they are available to update to an API connection.
- Check which accounts are currently supported here
- Check which Bank accounts in development and coming soon here
If you can’t wait for your bank to provide a robust API connection, now may be the perfect time to switch banks. They all have to offer an automatic switch service to make it easy to change and many of the highstreet banks also offer perks for switching so it could be a double win!
The Banks with the best performing APIs currently are:
- Monzo
- Starling
- Halifax
- LLoyds
- Bank of Scotland
Check out the Account status for the current status of supported banks.
