Faster, more reliable data feeds with open banking are here

Faster more reliable data feeds with open banking are here

Today we’re excited to take a bold new step towards significantly better financial data feeds as we prepare to launch support for open banking.

From the start, reliable financial account feeds have been the foundation of everything we do at Tiller Money. We chose our financial data provider carefully based on detailed comparison testing. Our engineering team spends more time maximizing the quality and reliability of our feeds than any other feature.This isn’t changing anytime soon – and everyone on Tiller Money’s team agrees that we can’t spend too much time on quality data feeds.

Better feeds than ever

Open banking is built on three ideas that come together to make your Tiller Money data feeds better than ever.

You own your data. The core premise of open banking is that your financial data is yours. It doesn’t belong to the banks. It’s not hidden from you. It’s yours and it should be available to you in accessible forms.

There was a time when some banks held on to data, fearing that they would lose relevance if your banking data was available through apps and services like Tiller Money. Customers have spoken loudly, and every bank offering open banking is supporting the notion that you should have easier and more secure access to your data at any time.

Your data is reliably available through APIs. Banks that are embracing open banking are creating application programming interfaces (APIs) that make it easy for third-parties, like Tiller Money, to securely and reliably access your data. No screen scraping. No improvising. This should dramatically increase the quality and timeliness of data we feed into our customers spreadsheets. We expect this will have a positive impact on reducing duplicates, data irregularities, connection errors, and outages. No more daily 2FA security codes codes to refresh your accounts.

You won’t share your passwords. The method for sharing data will change too. You will no longer need to share your bank usernames and passwords because institutions that support open banking will allow you to authenticate directly through their site and grant Tiller Money access to your data using OAuth instead.

To use open banking authentication you will complete a one-time direct login to your bank’s site through our data provider’s secure connection portal and authorize Tiller Money to access balance and transaction data for your open banking enabled accounts going forward. You can login to your bank at any time and review which services have access to what, add new services, and revoke others. You’re in control.

You’ve likely experienced OAuth with many apps you already use, and this is absolutely the most secure and convenient way to share financial account data with services like Tiller Money.

Yodlee’s first open banking partner starting this fall

Tiller Money has worked with Yodlee as our primary data provider since our founding, and we’re excited Yodlee asked us to be their first partner to deploy their open banking service to the public.

As of today, we’re now supporting open banking for Citi customers on the latest integration with our data provider with more major institutions to come. Yodlee is moving fast to support open banking with the top 20 banks, adding more each quarter. We’ll be moving quickly to roll these out to Tiller Money customers as soon as possible too.

We hope that in the near future, every bank supports open banking. This will be a win for customers. It will also advance Tiller Money’s ability to deliver on our core values around privacy, reliability, and control.

Next steps for Citi customers

If you’re a Citi customer and you’re on the latest integration with our data provider you’ll have access to this new more reliable data feed option starting today. You only need to visit the Console (https://sheets.tillerhq.com/auth/google) and update the connection to Citi under the Account Summary by clicking “Connection > Edit credentials.”

If you don’t see an indication that you need to “update” the connection after clicking through to “edit credentials” it likely means you’re still on the older integration with our data provider or you can reach out to our team via chat to ask. If you’re interested in early access workflows for migrating to the newer integration, please fill out this form.

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Excellent. I followed the instructions on the console I normally use (https://sheets.tillerhq.com/# - your link did not work for me) and after asking me to update my credentials, I got a Yodlee window. The first time it all crashed. But, undaunted, I tried again and the second time worked fine and dandy. I also got a notice from Citi that I had granted Tiller authorization.

Nice.

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Ah thanks @susandennis, I corrected the URL. Had a typo in there :slight_smile:

Awesome. Eager to see more providers supporting this.

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Is there any published information about which banks are considered the top 20 banks? This ia great news and I’m hopeful the institutions I use will be included sooner rather than later!

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What makes this better than what already works? I mean I haven’t noticed any issues during my trial for Citi bank. What I am more concerned with is the banks that DON’T work reliably like Capital One, or RBC

Sadly I’ve tried to update Citi numerous times across several days and I keep getting the error:

“We’re sorry. Your request has failed due to an internal error or server unavailability. Please try again later.”

@dafuerstman, can you please try an incognito browser session? This has helped others who have encountered this issue.

@jwvanderbeck, you can read more about why open banking is better here. It’s a more stable connection less prone to outages and disconnections.

Thanks! Private browsing session worked the first time.

I guess my point was, why Citi to start? You say open banking is more reliable and less prone to outages and disconnects, but I haven’t experienced any problems whatsoever from Citi anyway so it seems a weird first bank. Why not ones that DO have severe issues like Capital One or RBC which to this day still don’t work reliably at all?

I’m not sure why Citi was first. This was an arrangement between our data provider, Yodlee, an Citi. It wasn’t something we had a choice or voice in.

Citi has had recent disconnections and outages. They were on the Outage list earlier this month. Sometimes the impact is limited to a small % sometimes it’s greater.

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I am very excited about this!

Is there is a list of those 20 banks that Yodlee is adding first? Fingers crossed that USAA is on the list :crossed_fingers:

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Without open banking standards Yodlee get to write software and maintain it that is different for every bank. That’s a terrible position to be in, for Yodlee and its customers. It is very inefficient, slow and costly to monitor and maintain, and the potential security issues from all that different code isn’t good either. With open banking, Yodlee get to write it once with minimal or no differences between the banks and financial institutions they connect to. What the customer should get is a more reliable and secure product, and as more institutions support access via open banking it will require very little effort (and time) by Yodlee to bring them online.

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This is great news! Citi is actually one of the banks I have to frequently force to refresh so I can’t wait until I can change it to Open Banking. Unfortunately, it looks like my account isn’t upgradable just yet.

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It’s great to see the move towards Open Banking. Yodlee was in the news not too long ago because it was revealed that their standard developer agreement includes giving permission to Yodlee for them to use end user’s financial data for other purposes, including in anonymized aggregate data products they provide. Is it the case that Tiller users’ financial data can be used by Yodlee in this way?

@heather - the Early Access Request form was missing a comments field. Is it possible to only upgrade my Citi account manually at this time?

@ings625 thanks for asking. In response to questions in the news, Yodlee has clarified how they manage customer data, and you can read more here: https://www.yodlee.com/envestnet-yodlee-adheres-leading-industry-practices-data-security-regulatory-compliance-and-privacy

@RachelB - there is not a way to only migrate Citi - it’s an all or nothing migration.

Why do I need to authorize access to my statements for citi? You only need my transactions. This may seem like 6 of one and a half dozen of another, but I don’t understand why you think you need this. Granted, this is better than the current solution, but least privilege is important. Who defines the scopes requested by your application?

Does this apply to store-branded cards serviced by Citi? I tried updating one but there was no difference in the process.