First National Bank (FNB) has become the first SA bank to allow personal financial management start-up 22seven access to its customers’ accounts, albeit on a limited basis.

The move stands in stark contrast to FNB rival Absa, which has blocked 22seven — specifically its US technology partner Yodlee — from accessing its clients’ accounts. 22seven requires users to enter their personal banking details so it can provide them with a graphical overview of their spending patterns.

“FNB has set a precedent of responding to our customer’s needs with innovative products and services. We are now providing a secure means to engage with 22seven in response to our customers’ need to learn more about their financial behavior,” says Lee-Anne van Zyl, CEO Online Banking at FNB, in a statement.

FNB Online Banking customers can set up a secondary user on their online banking profile, an option already available on FNB Online Banking. The secondary user profile has more limited functionality and a different user name and password to the primary user, the bank explains in the statement.

“FNB customers who are signed up to the 22seven service should set up a secondary user, select the accounts they wish to share and use a different username and password. If correctly set up to allow ‘view access’ only, this will limit the exposure of client information to transaction history, balances and account numbers,” says Van Zyl.

The bank says if clients have already signed up to 22seven using their primary transactional profile, it suggests they reset their primary user details with a new username and password. They can then set up a secondary user profile to use the 22seven service.

“It remains the responsibility of the client to ensure that their secondary user is set up to ‘view access’ only,” says Van Zyl. “However, FNB will work closely with 22seven to ensure that our customers only use the view access only profile when using the 22seven service.” — Staff reporter, TechCentral