Yolt ditching screenscraping

Looks like Yolt is going down the same path as Emma

https://content.mailplus.nl/m17/links/yolt/txt343884/t6igUmTnUkaDYJx

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I do like their status page though.

https://www.yolt.com/status

Pretty much all applies to Emma as well!!

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Yes,

we saw this yesterday.

I am quite happy we didn’t build some of those connections. As of today, they would become totally useless.

My main surprise is they are interrupting AMEX. The API is available and we have already implemented it. This is the same for Barclaycard and M&S.

As some of you might know, we are ditching both TrueLayer and Saltedge. We have already built all the Open Banking connections and will keep adding more as they become available. :slight_smile:

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Wise decisions, in retrospect.

This was a surprise to me too. I’m assuming they just haven’t got the API working yet.

Out of curiosity, is there much variation in the OB connection speeds? Will syncing be considerably faster now for high numbers of connections?

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We have it, so they are being slow.

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It doesn’t change anything on that side. We can just handle everything better in terms of support, conversion funnels, costs and etc…etc…etc.

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I have lots of connections and have found Open Banking connections are generally more reliable, as well as sync slightly faster (although that is subjective so I’m not certain).

The best thing is no popups like there used to be with Tesco Bank to complete the syncing - everything just works automatically, assuming there are no bank uptime issues and authorisation has been completed within the last 90 days.

I try to re-authorise all my connections at once so I only need to do it once every 90 days, rather than rolling all the time as the 90 day intervals expire.

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Being on the receiving end of people coming to chat about this, this change feels like Christmas came early :partying_face:

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It really is! :tada::tada:

As an aside from this topic, but something that has occurred me today, I do see that Yolt have launched Open Banking connections to CYBG current accounts. Is there any news on an Emma launch for these too?

Aren’t they part of Virgin Money now?

Yes they are @Joel, but they still use different systems.

The long term plan is to use CYBG’s iB platform for current accounts and savings accounts (and migrate from the old Virgin Money savings platform to iB) and use the Virgin Money credit card platform, migrating CYBG credit cards across to this platform from iB and then integrate the credit card part of the old platform with iB. Virgin money essential current accounts are then going to be moved across to iB via the switching service.

All of this is being phased in very slowly to avoid a TSB-style meltdown!

So, for now, there are still separate Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank logins which could be integrated into Emma via Open Banking. The Virgin Money integration only does savings accounts and credit cards at this time, and even though they will all eventually be moving to this branding the current Open Banking integration is actually an integration to the legacy Virgin Money platform and not iB. This is because Open Banking arrived before CYBG and Virgin had completed the merger process, so they were forced to build in support for Open Banking to the old platform.

TL;DR
What is really happening is a merger, where most of Virgin Money is being moved across to CYBG’s IT systems and company structures, before CYBG is then rebranded to Virgin. So the finished bank will be mostly CYBG, but called Virgin Money.