Chase and Intuit may have just solved the main issues with account aggregators.
The companies signed an agreement this morning, giving customers the option to authorize Chase to electronically share financial data securely with Intuit’s financial management applications, such as Mint, TurboTax Online and QuickBooks Online.
Banks, and Chase in particular, are notorious for their mistrust of third-party apps like Mint. In fact, Chase and Wells Fargo reportedly locked access to their customers’ account data for use in Mint back in Nov. 2015, citing reasons like data security, as well as server overload on the bank’s side.
With the current partnership, Chase and Intuit will use a B2B data-sharing API to download the customer information quickly and safely. Chase will use a token to authorize Intuit to download the requested account information on behalf of the customer, without requiring customers’ bank username and password. Additionally, routing the data traffic through the API will provide information directly to Intuit applications – freeing up server capacity on Chase’s side, according to the bank.
“The most important part of this is giving control to the customer,” Jamie Dimon, Chase CEO, said in a statement. “Customers will get to decide what they want to share and when they want to share it – without having to hand over their password.” (This is a very different tone than what Dimon said about Mint in 2015.)
The two companies are launching Open Financial Exchange (OFX) 2.2 API as “part of the enhancements” and to encourage other industry players to join the initiative.
To learn more about P2P payments, join us in San Jose on March 6-7 for Bank Innovation 2017, where the best conversations in fintech take place. Request your invitation here.