Open banking feed Santander giving generic transaction descriptions

Hi, we’ve got our current account with Santander going via the Open Banking API and have noticed that transactions which previously via Yodlee would have had proper descriptions now sometimes just say “BANK TRANSFER DEBIT” or “BANK TRANSFER CREDIT”

Maybe this is just a Santander thing but it seems odd? Obviously automatic tagging rules can’t work with this.

We’ve also had some duplicate transactions but that might have just been the overlap between switching from Yodlee to API.

See screenshot to illustrate:

Hello @Nurg,

Santander have recently started supplying truncated descriptions. Their Open Banking team have acknowledged to us that this is a fault and that a fix will be deployed shortly. I have again asked them to provide an update on this and will report back shortly.

I am sorry for the inconvenience this causes and interim solution may be to revert back to the Yodlee feed until these issues are resolved by Santander.

Hi, it seems it’s duplicating the transactions. I get the generic description “BANK TRANSFER” immediately and then in the following 24 hours I get the same transaction again with the correct description.

Does the API include a unique ID for each transaction?

It doesn’t and that’s the problem we find ourselves with at the moment. Transactions are locked down by date, description and amount. Some banks present transactions initially with abbreviated references then later present the same transaction with a more detailed reference. Without a unique ID we don’t have a way to know for sure if the transactions are in fact distinct or not.

Open Banking feeds should not be doing this and we’ve escalated this specific issue with Santander to the OBIE group for them to resolve. We received an email this morning from Santander advising that they’re hoping to get a date on when this issue will be patched. As soon as I know more I will update this thread.

Again I apologise for the inconvenience this causes.

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