I have just been told that it is not possible to have an Open Banking Feed from Barclays, as the account I am working with is double signatory - meaning that every payment requires two signatures. For online banking with Barclays that works fine. However after spending 1 hour on the phone Barcklays are adamant that that means it is impossible to have the Open Banking feed into Quickfile, as apparently that would mean it is possible to set up payments with only one signature.
This means I cannot use Open Banking from Barclays for this account. Please advise where the option is for me to continue with the Yodlee feed?
Yep that’s what I’m trying to explain to Barclays, but they are adamant that providing me with Open Banking access would also give me the possibility to do payments without a second signatory. They do not seem able to setup the access to Open Banking on a per provider basis, and in turn have those approved by two signatories.
That means I am still stuck. I would need to carry on with the Yodlee feed until this whole story wends it way through the various complaints procedures. How do I do that?
Thanks for the Yodlee Bank Feeds page. However, that is currently no help at all. When I go there, it tells me that there is now a fancy new way of having the feed, which is Open Banking. However, as already explained, Barclays will not let me have Open Banking on my account.
I then try to set up a Yodlee feed again, however I cannot seem to enable the Continue button. How do I do that?
Under the new PSD2 rules, the FCA have requested an end to bank feeds that employ the use of screen-scraping and a migration to direct Open Banking feeds. The only exemption to this is where the bank is not included in the CMA-9 group (i.e. the largest UK banks) and no direct API is available. Unfortunately for Barclays no exemption is available from these rules and the only feed we will be able to provide from 14th September is the Open Banking feed.
I am not entirely sure however you will be prevented from using Open Banking feeds, as it’s a read-only feature and we have no facility to initiate payments on the accounts connected. I would confirm this with Barclays as currently I don’t see how this affects the dual signatory requirement, which presumably is only limited to payment initiation.
I have spent two hours on the phone with Barclays confirming this. Because the mandate of the account stipulates 2 signatories for each payment, they say that makes the account ineligible for Open Banking. Barclays does not make any distinction whatsoever between using Open Banking for transferring account information and using Open Banking for payment processing. Therefore that means that they view any use of Open Banking as potentially being payment processing. For which my account needs 2 signatures. Which they say they cannot guarantee through a third party.
However the only thing I want is to use Open Banking for transferring account information. Which they will not allow.
Therefore, I am unable to use Open Banking. And you now tell me that I am unable to use the Yodlee feed.
So who can actually cut through this? Do you have any way for me to reach someone at Barclays to sort this out? Because after 2 hours all I got was an robotic-like repetition of what my mandate is, and no thinking whatsoever about how to fix this.
Alternatively is there a way you can make an exception in this case for me still to use Yodlee?
That should not be the case, but it guess comes down to their own system design. I will escalate this to our Open Banking contact at Barclays, but they are taking 3-4 days to reply at the moment. Many banks are responding much slower at the moment with all the PSD2 overhead.
Unfortunately regarding Yodlee, we don’t have any control here, as to my knowledge the FCA have required Yodlee to close down those feeds on 14th. Sorry I could not be of more help here.
Yes please can you escalate this to your Open Banking contact at Barclays?
What I think happened is that Barclays took a number of shortcuts:
They did not distinguish between the two different parts of Open Banking (transferring account information vs. opening up payment processing
They did not include an option to provide approval for individual third parties via a multi-signatory setup.
I cannot be the only organisation who is impacted by this.
It is also possible that Barclays have implemented the above 2 points, but have hidden it from the general public and that it needs to be switched on separately. Or that they have not taken the trouble of explaining any of this to their call centre - remarkably few of them had even heard of Open Banking.
So I’m hoping your contact can shed light on this. I’m fine with it taking 3-4 days to reply.
I’ve posed the question and I will return to you as soon as they provide some clarity on the matter. They are in a much better position to answer this question as they have an inside view on the development side. It could be, as you say that they’ve taken a shortcut, although fingers crossed that isn’t the case. Certianly I’ve not heard of this issue before.
Out of interest have you tried to connect your feed using Open Banking from QuickFile?
And yes I have tried to connect the Open Banking feed via Quickfile. So I go to the account for which the feed is, I click on More Options / Activate Bank Feed. I select Open Banking from the pop up window. I click on Connect a Bank and select Barclays, and select Online Banking. That then puts me to the Barclays login page, where I enter all my details. It then thinks about it for a bit and then comes back with “X - 6012 - It looks like there are no eligible accounts are available to proceed with this request.”.
This is what prompted me to call Barclays.
If I’m logged in to Barclays, I can go to an option “Give Third Party Permissions”, however there it asks me for an access code. Which I don’t have.
So if you can find a way to give me an access code for Quickfile, I can try that too.
@Elsvan - just a thought on this. Do you have access to the mobile banking app for the account with Barclays? If so, have you tried adding the banking feed using this option?
Hi Mathew, thanks for thinking along. I don’t have the mobile app for that, as that is another thing that is hard to get with a double signatory on it.
Barclays have acknowledged the query I made on your behalf and they’ve defered to another department to get an answer. I will let you know as soon as that is forthcoming.
Good luck with Barclays! I struggled for months in 2016-17 to get them to understand things about my business. Thankfully, Tide and Starling turned up and I was able to walk away.
I have a friend who is a programmer for Barclays and he says they have huge legacy systems and still use mainframes - dinosaur technology from the last century. Bank migration is a big upheaval and caused me a few issues, but it was worth it in the long run. Starling are free to use and Tide charge 20p a transaction. Tide have web access, Starling don’t. I have gone with Starling because it pulls my transactions into Quickfile in real time and costs nothing to use. I am happy to initiate transactions on my mobile device.
Wow thanks for that, that’s really useful. I’ll have to investigate whether Starling also offer a double signature setup, as that is a prerequisite for us. Also that happens to be the current blocker at Barclays.
Currently Barclays have said that of course they can do this, I “only” have to fill in a form. Dinosaur technology indeed.
I’ve received the following response in regards to dual / multi signatory accounts.
Accounts where each party can operate independently of one another can use OB services however if they have a marker requiring all parties to sign then this would exclude them from the service.
Unfotunately I suspect it’s the latter in your case. I will send you a private message to discuss some options with you.