There's currently an open consultation about whether banks should have a lower compensation limit to refund their customers who have been scammed. Currently, if a customer falls for an Authorised Push Payment (APP) scam, they may be eligible for up to £415,000 back from their bank. The proposal is to limit this to a maximum of £85,000. What does this mean and is it a bad thing? APP fraud is when a fraudster convinces you to send them money. This isn't about a bank being tricked, or identity t…
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There's an incredibly distressing story in the BBC about a vulnerable elderly man who was conned out of his life savings. Fraud victim gets surprise £153,000 refund despite rules BBC News In the story, the heartless bank refused to refund the fraud victim due to an absurd technicality - the money was sent to a foreign account rather than a UK account. Once again, big business bending the rules in order to protect their profits from a defenceless pensioner. Only after protests did they …
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After writing about how to use MoneyDashboard's unofficial API, the good folk at Moneyed told me about their officially supported API! So here's a quick review & howto guide. Moneyed is a slightly strange service. I think it is designed for companies to give as a benefit to their employees. But you can sign up as an individual. The first month is free - but I don't see a way to tell how much subsequent months are. Although it is presented as an app for Android and iPhone, you can log in on…
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Note: MoneyDashboard is now closed. Yesterday, I wrote up how to use the MoneyDashboard Classic API. Read that blog post first before reading this one. MoneyDashboard have launched a new "Neon" service. The API is a bit more simple, but authentication is harder. Here's a quick guide to the bits of the API that I found useful. I've lightly redacted some of the API responses for my privacy. List of all supported institutions MoneyDashboard only supports a limited number of OpenBanking…
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Note: MoneyDashboard is now closed. The OpenBanking specification is brilliant. It allows you to aggregate all of your financial accounts in one place. You can give read or write access to apps and services. Magic! API access is restricted to registered financial institutions. That's good, because it puts up a barrier to entry preventing dodgy companies slurping up your data and sending all your money to scammers. But, whether by design or not, it means that you as an individual cannot get…
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I've blogged before about how backward the Co-op bank is - sadly, they've not improved in the last few years. I needed to close down my business bank account. I hopped on to online banking, provided all my details, went through 2FA with a physical token, remembered my mother's maiden name and began searching the site. There was no way to close the account. Oh well, I guess I'll give them a call. After 30 minutes on hold I was told "The account closing team leave at 4pm, sorry." It was 5…
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When you create a QR code which contains a URL, it is vital that the code is not only as small as possible, but also as user friendly as possible. I'm not a massive fan of short URL services like bit.ly - but for shrinking the text you want to fit in a QR code, they are invaluable. I want to take a look at a particularly interesting example from Nat West Bank. The Poster Despite having the QR too close to the ground (more of that in a later blog post) this seems like quite a good campaign. …
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It's Time To Switch Banks are fucking us over. They gamble with our money, lose it, ask us for a bail out, lose more money, then ask us for yet another bail out! They are resisting even the very modest changes the government is imposing on them. No more. We have a very easy way to stop the banks pissing about with our money. Take our money from them. I'm not talking about taking out your savings for a few days. I'm talking about a permanent withdrawal of our consent. We take our money…
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