2021 has so far been eventful when it comes to bank connections, to put it mildly. We’ve experienced some Brexit and connection partner related issues, which resulted in having to reconnect EU bank connections and even an extended dowtime in the case of certain banks, where replacements weren’t provided by partners.
We have better news today. The issues with connections have been abating for a while now, as our bank connection partners resolved the issues. Salt Edge provided an alternative AISP registration and onboarded banks shortly after, but still experienced delays in some cases due to the onboarding process. Plaid’s complete EU downtime continued for 2 months. They were granted a new AISP registration in middle of February and have been onboarding banks again since, most are now available again, but some exceptions remain. Where the connections are still not available, the ball is likely in the bank’s court, either due to slow processes of approving the new registration or errors on the connection itself.
At the time of writing 15 152 bank connections around the world are available on Toshl.
Yesterday, a larger batch of French and Spanish and Irish connections have been re-enabled. Where Salt Edge provided replacements during Plaid’s downtime, those connections will continue to use the Salt Edge connection. The connections which remained missing on Salt Edge, but are available again over Plaid, have been enabled.
Recent additions and re-additions to bank connections:
Ireland Allied Irish Banks, Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB (now over API), KBC, Ulster Bank
France Credit Lyonnais (LCL), Société Générale, HSBC, La Banque Postale
Netherlands American Express, Garantibank
Poland PKO Bank
Italy Banca Sviluppo Tuscia, Intesa Sanpaolo Corporate, BCC di Massafra, CRS, Banca Capasso Antonio, Banca Macerata, Banca Santa Giulia, Banca d’Alba, Banca di Sconto e Conti Correnti, Banco Marchigiano CC, Mediocredito Trentino, Prader Bank, Solution Bank
Belgium AXA
Germany Sparda Bank (7 regional veriations now over API), Barcalycard (now API)
Hungary MKB Bank
Spain Novo Banco
United Arab Emirates ADIB (Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank)
Croatia HBP
Slovakia OTP Banka
Czechia Fio Banka
Slovenia Delavska Hranilnica started supporting business accounts
Notable removals
Unites States several Charles Schwab connections in the US.
Israel Yahav Bank due to “technical issues” with scraping.
Still Missing in action – were available until Brexit issues, waiting to get them back. In most cases waiting for the bank to approve the new registration.
With API connections – which banks need to provide by law in the European Union, the banks provide a large part of the functionality on their end. The authentication and the sending of account, transaction data, if we simplify a bit.
While we understand that there are usually some glitches with the implementation of new solutions, some banks are showing remarkable consistency in not resolving issues for long periods of time. As for the reasons, we leave the Hanlon’s razor to you.
To better explain what goes on in some of these cases, what are the legal limitations of PSD2 and in hopes of improvements in the future, we’ve started the Shitty Bank List, where we’ll keep you updated on the depths of bank depravities. Our sincere hope is to shrink that list to 0 as connections and attitudes to Open Banking improve.
Major new features are coming up. At the moment, we’re testing much improved regular e-mail reports in weekly, monthly and yearly incarnations. Rather than just including the exported files, they now help you keep up with your finances and draw a line under your financial performance in the past month. How much was left to spend, how much you spent on food, account balances at the end of the month. All you need for a complete picture.
File exports are new as well. We’ve added OFX, but the real emphasis was on the PDF. Much like the e-mail reports, it’s no longer just about the list of transactions, but becomes a full report in its own right. Sums, graphs, budgets all while keeping it modular and printer friendly.
If you’re curious, you can get access to these new features a bit early.
We’re interested in your feedback. Both in how useful or not you find the features, as well as any reports about technical issues, if you run into them. While working well in cases we tried, the more different different types of data we can test the feature with, the better. In short, we’d like you to report some reports regarding these reports.
In 2016 the UK Conservative Party, with David Cameron leading it, fired shots. Into their own feet. As if this act of collective national self-mutilation wasn’t enough, they’re now coming for our feet as well.
WTF does all this have to do with Toshl Finance?
I’m glad you asked.
Banks in the European Union have a legal obligation to provide automatic data access (APIs) to transactions, financial accounts upon client’s authorisation. In turn, companies accessing that data, need to comply with the regulations as well and get a licence from the national banking regulator. Once the banking regulator in an EU member state issues the licence, it can be easily recognised (passported) by all other EU members. This way, an EU company can access this kind of financial data across the EU.
Lets, for the moment, leave aside that the banks are in many cases still woefully unprepared and merrily breaking this legislation, years after it was first announced and over a year since the last implementation deadline passed (Sep 14 2019). In most cases though, it’s working in at least a good-enough way.
As there are thousands of banks, each with their own peculiarities in technical implementations, we work with partners who help unify these connections and provide data access. The companies we work with right now are Salt Edge and Plaid.
Through either misfortune or lack of foresight, both these companies are registered in the United Kingdom. They got their AISP licence from the banking regulator in the UK (Financial Conduct Authority – FCA).
Due to the upcoming no-deal variation of Brexit, the legal system as described above will no longer apply in the UK. Licences issued by the UK banking regulator will no longer be automatically valid across the EU. They will be automatically revoked on Jan 1 2021.
Due to this, the existing connections via API to banks in the European Union will stop working on Jan 1.
We checked with both Plaid and Salt Edge multiple times during the last few years, especially in recent times when it was becoming clearer that Brexit likely won’t be orderly. Both companies reassured us that they’re taking the required measures and that there won’t be any disruption. Obviously, that didn’t happen as planned.
We also obtained our own AISP licence from the Slovenian banking regulator in 2020 in addition to using the licences of our partners to connect. Due to this, we can certainly appreciate that filling in all the regulatory checkboxes is a large task. The requirements of the PSD2 legislation and consequently of the regulator, are often unnecessarily complex while doubtful in usefulness. We did not yet start the migration to using our own licence as we initially expected to do this more gradually and seamlessly to the end user in 2021.
Had we known that Plaid and Salt Edge were not prepared with their AISP licences, we could have started this process sooner.
However, Plaid only notified us of these problems on 11 Dec, Salt Edge on 1 Dec.
The two companies came to rather different solutions for these issues.
Salt Edge
Salt Edge is in the process of registering its new licence with the National bank of Romania, but they were not able to complete it so far and plan to do so in the first half of 2021. They ended up buying (or leasing?) the AISP licence from another company.
The current connections will become inactive, but should be able to be immediately re-added on Jan 1 by using the new AISP licence. The new connection will need to be authenticated again by logging in to your online bank. The connection will also create new financial accounts to import on and they’ll need to be merged with the previous accounts. See instructions.
A secondary issue is that these connections will need to be re-added again once Salt Edge gets its own proper licence. Wherever possible, we will try to use our own licence from here on, so that this second switch won’t be necessary.
Plaid
Plaid is in the process of registering its new licence with the National bank of Netherlands. They however did not even provide a wonky attempt at replacement like Salt Edge did. From Plaid, we just got a straight up notice on Dec 11 that they won’t be offering their services in January 2021 until they receive the new licence. Without even adding an apology. Quite an attitude, especially coming from a well funded company that Visa intends to pay 5,3 billion dollars for. Not exactly starved for resources, if for competence.
Needless to say, we are extremely disappointed with this outcome.
Our action plan
Use of our own AISP licence and certificates. Transitioning to them was the plan all along for 2021, but we’re now greatly speeding up those efforts. Unfortunately this also takes some time, as banks need to onboard our certificates, have varying degrees of IT sophistication and there could be staffing issues due to Covid-19 and the end of the year.
Replacing Plaid bank connections with the ones from Salt Edge, where available. We currently offer European Plaid connections in Spain, France, the Netherlands and UK. UK will, ironically, be unaffected by this. Quite a few of these connections will have replacements available via a Salt Edge connection, but unfortunately, we cannot promise this will be the case for all. We will likely be experiencing a prolonged downtime with certain connections in France, Spain and the Netherlands until Plaid has a registered AISP licence again.
Searching for new bank connection partners to provide both wider connectivity as well as backup connections precisely for such cases as described here.
Notifying all our customers of these issues via this blog, social networks and emails to provide re-connecting instructions and lessen the impact.
As we investigate the replacement connection options for banks, we will be providing more detailed information about which banks will be affected, how and notifying the affected users.
On January 1st, an affected connection will become inactive.
Re-add it as a new bank connection.
Limit import by date. After authenticating the connection, you’ll be asked what time period you want to import the transactions for. Choose from Jan 1 2021 onward. This is to avoid duplication with your previously imported transactions.
Merge old and new financial accounts. The re-added connection will also add new financial accounts and import on these new accounts. You can then easily merge them with the financial accounts from before, to keep them unified. Select to keep updating the account from the new bank connection.
Done.
Only bank connections to banks in the European Union over an API connection are affected by these issues.
Replacement connections will be provided for most banks.
Due to Plaid’s January shutdown we won’t be able to provide replacements for some connections in France, Spain and the Netherlands in the meantime.
Connections elsewhere around the world and connections using the scraping method are not affected by this issue.
In conclusion, we realise this is a big letdown. We sincerely apologise to our customers who will be affected by this issue. We will be doing our utmost to remedy the situation and provide more robust connectivity options in the future so that such situations won’t be able to reoccur.
The Brexit omnishambles makes fools of us all. We wish our English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish brethren and all affected by this pest, the strength and perseverance to overcome.
Update 17. 12. : removed a direct quote from Salt Edge upon request and a made factual correction regarding licence purchase.
Stable ground is a precious commodity. We all need sources of stability in our lives, even more so when other parts of our lives become more fluid, prone to changes. While that’s true in general, a pandemic and other global turmoil really help bring the point home right now.
As if all this wasn’t enough to give you the impression that you’re playing life in the hard mode, imagine being caught in an abusive relationship to boot. The source of stability for many, but what can quickly become your Achilles’ heel if your partner is abusive. “Financial insecurity is the # 1 reason why people who experienced gender-based violence return to an abusive relationship or enter into a new abusive relationship.” – Freeform.
To get out of a relationship like that, overcome and thrive on your own, building your own stability matters. While it’s only one aspect of the process, financial stability matters too. Both when leaving an abusive relationship, as well as when getting back up on your on feet after.
This is where the money coach Tiffany Tara and her group for financial empowerment are trying to help. We talked with Tiffany by videoconference from Germany, where she now lives after having moved from the US.
She leads a group of abuse survivors, meeting regularly to discuss their daily financial lives, as well as plan for the future. While their financial lives may be under additional stress due to all the circumstances, their approach to improving their financial lives holds lessons for us all.
One of the first steps is knowing yourself and addressing your deep-seated financial biases. For example, based on your past influences and the resulting personal approach to money, you likely fit into one of the 8 financial archetypes. When faced with a quick decision, our approach to money is often subconscious and rooted in our pre-defined attitudes, rather than well considered rational analysis. That’s why knowing, for example, that you might fit into the “Innocent” archetype might help. It may just be enough to get you to pay attention and not avoid financial matters altogether as “innocents” otherwise might. If that’s not your schtick, you might be an upfront-planning Warrior, spiritually-minded Magician, a Martyr that always puts the needs of others in front of their own, or one of the other archetypes. In any case, realising your upfront financial biases can help with shaping a healthier belief system about money.
The group also discusses their current financial issues openly, getting them out in the open to deal with them better inside the group. They use the Toshl apps to track their daily finances and empower themselves with data.
Financial survivors can make 100 000 $ less in their lifetime earnings due to abuse, according to estimates, so it’s even more important to lessen these effects in the long term. To be more concrete, according to Freefrom, the lifetime costs of intimate partner violence—including the costs of related health problems, lost productivity, and criminal justice costs on average $103,767 for women and $23,414 for men.*
Redefining your personal approach to money is a good start, but longer-term plans are needed as well. The group also works together on their 6-month financial plans, using data to fill in a more customised spreadsheet and make a rough outline of their future needs, goals and how to best manage them. Getting out of debt is certainly one such worthy goal, removing uncertainty and empowering individuals to make bolder choices in the future.
We wish Tiffany and her group all the best and lots of success on the road to financial empowerment. We could all learn from them.
Life savings in form of lollipops might be appropriate for Toshl monsters, but not necessarily humans. Caution is advised.
*Cora Peterson, Megan C. Kearns, Wendy LiKamWa McIntosh, Lianne Fuino Estefan, Christina Nicolaidis, Kathryn E. McCollister, Amy Gordon & Curtis Florence, “Lifetime Economic Burden of Intimate Partner Violence Among U.S. Adults,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, (2018): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2018.04.049
We’ve added support for a bunch of new cryptocurrencies for use in Toshl Finance apps. This means you can add transactions, accounts (wallets) or budgets in these new currencies as well and the exchange rates will be continually updated.
This also means that you can automatically import and update financial accounts in these currencies from crypto exchanges like Coinbase, Bitstamp and Bitfinex.
249 currencies are now supported and auto-updated in Toshl.
170 fiat currencies.
75 cryptocurrencies.
4 commodities.
New currencies added today:
Symbol Name
ALGO Algorand
BAL Balancer
BAND Band Protocol
CGLD Celo
LINK Chainlink
COMP Compound
ATOM Cosmos
DAI Dai
KNC Kyber Network
LRC Loopring
MKR Maker
NMR Numeraire
OXT Orchid
PAX Paxos
REN Ren
REPV2 REPv2
XLM Stellar Lumens
XTZ Tezos
UMA Uma
UNI Uniswap
USDC USD Coin
YFI yearn.finance
