FAQs

What is Open Banking?

Open Banking is an initiative led by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to facilitate innovation, competition and collaboration between banks, financial technology and online service providers through the creation of new products and services for customers using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

What is PSD2?

The Payment Services Directive 2 is a law set by the EU. The main aim is to make card payments, and account access safer and more secure for customers, through the introduction of Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). Another key focus is to apply open banking rules to all companies who provide payment accounts across Europe, not just the nine largest UK Banks that the Competitions and Markets Authority focused on.

What is a Third Party Provider (TPP)?

A Third Party Provider is an organisation that uses APIs to access customer’s financial accounts, in order to provide account information services and/or to initiate payments. Third Party Providers are either Payment Initiation Service Providers (PISPs) and/or Account Information Service Providers (AISPs).

How do I check if a Third Party Provider (TPP) is authorised?

Please visit the FCA register and search for the company with the FCA TPP register. This will inform you when the TPP became registered, and whether they are an AISP, or a PISP, or both.

What is an Account Servicing Payment Service Provider (ASPSP)?

An Account Servicing Payment Service Provider is a company who provides the payment facility (credit cards, current accounts). Your bank or credit card provider will be an ASPSP. Their role in open banking is to allow TPPs with consent, access to their customers account data, so that the TPP can provide the services they offer.

What is the 118 118 Money Open Banking Developer Portal?

The 118 118 Money Open Banking Developer Portal provides a means for third parties that are authorised by the FCA to access customer information on the basis of the customer’s active consent.

What Open Banking APIs does 118 118 Money offer?

The Account and Transactions API enables authorised account information service providers (AISPs) to access a consented payment service user’s (PSU) account and transaction information in relation to domestic personal credit card accounts. We have developed our API endpoints using the Open Banking Read/Write API specifications outlined within www.openbanking.org.uk.

What Open Banking APIs versions do you support?

We support a minimum of two API versions in our production environment and our test environment in line with regulated guidelines. This ensures that we support the most recent and previous major and minor versions. Please see the Open Banking Developer Zone for the most recent versions.

How long do transfers made via our API take to process?

The duration is in-line with transfers made on the 118 118 Money website.

When are the APIs available?

118 118 Money’s online banking service is available 24 hours a day. Any unavailability will be listed within our developer portal, and advertised through Open Banking’s Organisations service desk.

Where can I find statistics on the performance and availability of your APIs?

We monitor the performance and availability of our APIs, and report these monthly within our developer portal. We document the following KPIs:

• Daily uptime (shown as a percentage)
• Daily downtime (shown as a percentage)
• Daily time taken for AISP response time (in milliseconds)
• Daily error response rate (number of error messages each day)

Do you have a test environment?

Yes. Please contact us for more information.

How do Third Party Providers raise support queries or complaints?

Please contact us for any open banking support and development queries.

What are the hours of support?

We monitor our services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We aim to reply to any questions raised to 118 118 Money within 24 hours.

How do Third Party Providers raise incidents?

If you experience an issue with our API, please review the service availability published within our developer portal for known issues and updates. If your issue(s) are not shown then please contact us. We will aim to categorise, and respond to these incidents as follows:

• High - Business critical issue: represents a complete loss of service or a significant feature that is completely unavailable, and no workaround exists (first response SLA - one hour).
• Medium - Degraded service issue: incidents intermittent issues and reduced quality of service. A workaround may be available (first response SLA - four hours).
• Low - General issue: cosmetic issues which include product questions, feature requests and development issues in staging environments (first response SLA - 24 hours).

How do I escalate an incident if I am unhappy with the resolution response?

Please raise the escalation to the openbankingsupport@118118money.com mailbox. 118 118 Money will then assign an escalation point of contact to discuss your incident.

Where can I find out more information on key Open Banking terms, entities and acronyms?

Please visit the Open Banking Glossary.