As you may know with the introduction of PSD2 it has been necessary for us to suspend a number of bank feeds with providers that do not have a PSD2 Open Banking compatible API, which would allow us to comply with FCA regulations.
In the past we have used Yodlee as an intermediary to support Metro Bank and Co-op Bank (among others), these feeds required our users to disclose their online banking login credentials and employ a technique referred to as “screen-scraping” to extract the relevant transaction data.
From 14th March Metro Bank introduced a new Modified Customer Interface (MCI) for third parties such as QuickFile to access customer data. Co-op are planning to release something similar but have encountered technical issues which has stalled the release. The MCIs provide the minimum needed to stay PSD2 compliant, and remain dependent on screen-scraping and disclosure of online banking credentials, which from a security perspective is far from the recommended best practice.
We understand that both banks do intend to eventually develop a PSD2 compliant API, which would allow us to introduce support within a matter of days. Unfortunately developing a very complex and potentially unstable integration on the MCI platform is not a good use of our finite developer resources and will fail to deliver a good user experience.
For now we will watch and wait, ready to implement an API integration as soon as it becomes available. Often banks will focus their efforts based on consumer demand, by reaching out to your bank manager and requesting support for Open Banking APIs, it may go some way to expediting the work.
We will continue to keep you informed on this subject and we will prioritse the development of Open Banking feeds as soon as they become available.