How does OpenBanking actually benefit me?

Discuss what benefits open banking actually brings to the table…

I’ve only ever used it for seeing bank accounts in other apps, so that’s Monzo Plus and Emma at the moment.

I added Chase to Emma but it was a pain having to manually update transactions and round-ups, so lack of Open Banking (or at least some sort of API) is almost a deal-breaker for me.

Providing the ability to keep tabs on the balances and transactions of some of my accounts from within the app of the bank that serves as my main account is really the only benefit for me. But the scope is really limited here and is let down by needing to authenticate every 90 days. The value doesn’t really outweigh the frustrations, so it’s barely worth setting up for that for me.

Everything else is a worse solution to problems that already have better solutions.

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From someone in payment (into Government) the potential to save the tax payer millions of pounds in transaction fees by using Open Banking are huge, it’s about 50p per £100 paid that could be saved.

Lower risk of fraud, lower costs of disputes and chargebacks, and simpler reconciliation will all help

Would that then translate to an end user though of ‘Pay through Open Banking with zero additional charges or pay by Debit/Credit/BACS for an additional charge of 50p, £1 etc?’.

What would be my incentive to, presumably, give the Government access to my account?
And would there be any paranoia over what they could and couldn’t see in my account? If someone was claiming benefits, would Open Banking let the Government see what they’re actually spending their money on, and then led to them cutting their benefits if they felt they were not spending it correctly (buying alcohol for example?).

Absolutely nothing, I don’t use it

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I’ve used the following although the first one (aggregation etc) is the only one I use extensively.

Aggregation, budgeting, spending tracking (e.g. Emma). If only have a single bank this may be useful if it provides better interface and tools than your bank’s own app (probably only relevent to those who use high a traditional bank as their only bank). If you have accounts with multiple banks it helps with tracking across multiple accounts.

Tailored consumer tips based on spending history (e.g. Snoop).

Automated saving based on spending history and predictions (e.g. Chip).

I’ve also made payments to merchants via open banking although in not sure what benefit this serves over other payment methods (if any).

Open banking has been used in renting and mortgage applications to see your transactions over the last three months.

As far as Government monitoring and controlling use of benefits I don’t think they’ll bother. It’ll probably cost more than catching people out.

I think if they wanted to they would pass a law making it mandatory.

You can bet they will actively monitor transactions via CBDC if we get a BritCoin in circulation.

Being able to see all my accounts in one place. Keeping an eye on the credit cards that I don’t often use and therefore don’t manually check often. Feels like I am better protected from potential fraud this way.

Nope, because in payments only world, you’ll be doing a bank transfer and not allowing Account wide access.

I suspect there are parts of government which would want Account access, but you have to consent to that, and can revoke that when you want.

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That should be sorted (somewhat) soon?

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[ Paywalled ]

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For free:

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I think her comments are fair and represent the weakness of open banking. I’m not sure why other fintechs would come out with the comments.

She’s absolutely right that a significantly vast majority of people would not want to pay to consolidate their data in a single new service. It’s a very niche thing.

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At the same time some to most of those signees ( if that’s a word) would have their business reduced to nothing or close to if open banking wasn’t around, so a bit biased too.

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I agree that Open Banking is a failure in terms of that it didn’t set out what it meant to do. I wouldn’t advocate for its withdrawal. But perhaps additional, more useful features to a lot of people could make use of.

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The word for people who have signed something is signatory/signatories.

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Open banking has always seemed to me like a solution looking for a problem.

As Anne says, nobody is prepared to pay for open banking/the sharing of data, so how are most of those companies going to make any money?

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:+1: :+1: :+1:

whilst I can see that it would be a benefit to some users, to me it just seems to be a way of over complicating finances.

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Ah yes :sweat_smile:
Brain fart.

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