Hi @LiberianEnglish and welcome to the community!
I’d like to give everyone an update on this topic.
Sadly, the information we have received from Metro Bank is actually that they’ve withdrawn all plans to release an Open Banking API.
They have released an alternative solution, the minimum they could do to be compliant with the PSD2 regulations, which is called “modified customer interface” (MCI).
We have no plans to integrate with this channel because it is no different to a screen-scraper:
- unreliable, any minor change from the bank to the style of the page can result in your account not syncing or showing incorrect balance/transactional data;
- less secure than API: you need to provide us with your online banking credentials;
- slow to connect and request data from;
- it takes way longer to build the integration and, because of the sudden changes that the bank could apply any time, we would also need to spend time fixing it with no notice;
- automatic bank account refreshes are impossible: it would require you to be present and receive a one-time code, usually via sms, every time you want to sync data with Emma (to be fair, some banks are removing this limitation, not sure about Metro yet).
Metro Bank until a few weeks ago had plans to release their API but then, perhaps for some cost-cutting decision, decided to make their worse/temporary alternative the definitive long-term solution.
Not happening anymore:
