Open Banking and Screen Scraping: What You Need to Know, Made Simple

Have you come across the term Open Banking? It's not just industry lingo; it's a significant development in financial services. At BlinkPay, we are leveraging Open Banking to create innovative, user-friendly products. Here's a simplified guide to help you understand its benefits and how it differs from another method known as 'Screen Scraping'. 

What is Open Banking? 

Open Banking offers a secure way for your trusted apps to interact with your bank. With your permission, these apps can access your financial information, like account balances and transactions, through APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). Think of APIs as a secure digital handshake between your bank and the third-party application. 

Points to Consider About Open Banking 

• Security: Open Banking employs advanced security protocols to safeguard your data. 
• User Control: You decide who can access your banking data and for what purposes. 
• Data minimisation: You only share the minimum data needed to access a product or service. 
• Easy Revocation: If you change your mind, you can revoke access at any time.
• Innovation: Open Banking creates a foundation that enables the development of new financial tools and services.
• Industry standard: Payments NZ has developed a set of industry standards that all users must adhere to if they are to use Open Banking, and the Commerce Commission is currently considering what regulations might be needed too.

What is Screen Scraping? 

Screen Scraping is an older technique where a third-party service logs into your bank account on your behalf to collect data or initiate transactions. Imagine it as a virtual agent acting like you to interact with your bank's user interface. 

Points to Consider About Screen Scraping 

• Security: Sharing your login details with another party poses certain security risks. 
• Liability: Sharing your login details can also break your banks terms and conditions, which could leave you liable for any losses incurred.  
• Data Reliability: If your bank updates its website, the data scraping could be disrupted.
• Transparency: It may not always be clear who has your data, what they are doing with it, and how you can retrieve it.
• Regulatory Concerns: Screen scraping sometimes operates in legal grey areas, particularly around data protection.  

Open Banking vs. Screen Scraping: A Comparison 

Open Banking and Screen Scraping both enable third-party access to your financial data, but they do so in different ways. Open Banking uses APIs for a more secure and regulated interaction, while Screen Scraping involves direct login by a third party effectively impersonating you (with your permission!), which poses certain risks. 

We at BlinkPay are optimistic about the capabilities Open Banking introduces. It aligns with our goal of providing smarter, safer options for your online transactions. 

And there you have it—a quick overview of Open Banking and Screen Scraping. We hope this sheds some light on Open Banking and why we at BlinkPay are excited to be a part of this transformation! 

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