{"id":12244,"date":"2012-05-11T15:27:28","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T13:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=12244"},"modified":"2012-05-11T15:29:05","modified_gmt":"2012-05-11T13:29:05","slug":"absa-may-block-22seven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/12244\/absa-may-block-22seven\/","title":{"rendered":"Absa may block 22seven"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though 22seven\u2019s<\/a> ability to pull data from an Absa<\/a> Internet Banking customer\u2019s account has been restored, this is not with the bank\u2019s permission, Absa said.<\/p>\n

22seven is a personal financial management (PFM) service that automatically retrieves a user\u2019s transaction information from their bank through its third-party aggregation provider, Yodlee<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yodlee requires users to provide their full login credentials: username (which is an account number with some banks), and a password (which for some banks is a PIN and password combination). This is used to log into your Internet banking from which Yodlee gathers the transaction data on your accounts.<\/p>\n

Other PFM tools allow users to manually import statements rather than linking to their bank accounts, but 22seven said that they first wanted to focus on automatically getting that data for the user.<\/p>\n

When Absa prevented Yodlee from accessing the Internet banking of its customers earlier this year it meant that Absa account holders weren\u2019t able to get their transaction data into 22seven.<\/p>\n

Yodlee\u2019s access appeared to be restored some weeks after Absa cut them off, with users reporting that their data was being updated again.<\/p>\n

However, according to Absa they didn\u2019t restore or enable access to Yodlee.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are aware of the varying tactics being employed by third party aggregation sites that pose a clear risk to our customers\u2019 security, and we continue to work to close any gaps that could potentially allow a third party access to our customers\u2019 personal details,\u201d Absa said.<\/p>\n

An Absa spokesperson explained to MyBroadband that the bank would cut off Yodlee in future if it discovered a security hole that needed to be closed.<\/p>\n

\"Christo

Christo Davel, founder of 22seven<\/p><\/div>\n

22seven in discussions with banks, reserve bank<\/strong><\/p>\n

At a press event where 22seven announced its exit from beta, founder Christo Davel<\/a> told journalists that in meetings with Absa, the bank had told them that they can’t stand in the way of customer demands and just have to find a way to manage the risk.<\/p>\n

Davel also said that they met with the regulator, the South African Reserve Bank. After Yodlee\u2019s presentation the discussion shifted from concerns about security to one around messaging, Davel said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur task is to find ways of linking with banks so that users don\u2019t have to breach their bank\u2019s terms and conditions to use 22seven,\u201d Davel said.<\/p>\n

He went on to say that he believes banks will provide secure interfaces (or API<\/acronym>s) which companies like 22seven could use to offer its services. \u201cIt\u2019s just a question of when,\u201d Davel said.<\/p>\n

According to Davel, the situation in South Africa\u2019s PFM space mirrors what happened in the United States 11 years ago.<\/p>\n

Davel said the first company to launch a tool that made use of financial aggregation services was actually sued by a bank.<\/p>\n

According to reports, First Union Corp. sued Paytrust Inc.<\/a> towards the end of 1999 for using screen scraping technology to access users\u2019 account data (with permission from the user).<\/p>\n

First Union posted warnings<\/a> about not being able to \u201cguarantee the security of your account\u201d on its site similar to those issued by South African banks when 22seven announced its public beta.<\/p>\n

It is interesting to note that some months later, First Union reportedly struck a deal with Yodlee after dropping the case against Paytrust.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Why ABSA is blocking 22seven<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Banks respond to FNB\u2019s move to \u201callow\u201d 22seven<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

22seven scary T&Cs getting revised<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

22seven beta ending soon, supports Virgin Money<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

22seven leaves beta, promises mobile apps<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even though 22seven’s ability to pull data from an Absa Internet Banking customer’s account has been restored, this is not with the bank’s permission, says Absa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":5143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[1144,29,2732,2756,26,2757,2758,2759,2760],"class_list":["post-12244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-22seven","tag-absa","tag-christo-davel","tag-first-union-bank","tag-headline","tag-paytrust","tag-personal-financial-management","tag-pfm","tag-sa-reserve-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12244"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12248,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12244\/revisions\/12248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}