Open Banking account information services: see several business accounts in one place

Open Banking account information services let a business give an authorised provider permission to retrieve information from selected online payment accounts. That can bring balances and transactions from several banks into one dashboard or finance application, improving visibility without sharing online-banking passwords.

An AISP retrieves account information with explicit consent

The FCA defines an account information service as an online service that provides consolidated information on one or more payment accounts held with other providers. The third party is an Account Information Service Provider, or AISP.

The business decides which accounts to connect and must give explicit consent. The AISP should not need the company to hand over bank login credentials directly.

Multi-bank visibility can improve treasury control

A company with current accounts, savings, foreign-currency balances and secondary banks can use AIS to view cash without signing into every provider individually.

That helps daily cash positioning and reconciliation, but the dashboard is only as current as the connected bank data. Critical payments should still be checked against the bank where final available balance matters.

Consent defines the data and duration of access

Open Banking's March 2026 customer-experience standards describe the account-information consent journey. The user sees the information requested and authorises access through the account provider.

Keep a register of connected services and review whether each app still needs access. Remove old accounting, lending or cash-management connections after the service is no longer used.

Check FCA authorisation or registration

The FCA tells users to verify that account-information providers are authorised or registered for the service. A professional-looking finance app is not enough evidence.

Check the legal company, not only the product brand, and understand whether another regulated provider sits behind the service.

Open Banking avoids password sharing but does not remove cyber risk

The bank normally authenticates the user directly. That is safer than giving a third party online-banking credentials, but the AISP still holds sensitive transaction and balance data.

Use strong administrator access, remove departed employees and check provider privacy and data-retention terms. Financial visibility can be valuable information even when the third party cannot itself move money.

Use aggregated data as a finance tool, not the sole accounting record

AIS feeds can support dashboards and reconciliation, but accounting records still need transaction classification and evidence. Duplicate or missing feed items should be investigated.

At month-end, reconcile each source bank account to its official statement or provider record. Aggregation should reduce manual work without making the company dependent on one app for the existence of its banking evidence.

Worked example: a company uses three banks with sterling, euro and dollar accounts. An AISP dashboard can aggregate all selected balances, giving treasury one view before funding payroll or converting currency. The company should still identify which balance belongs to which legal entity and whether it is restricted or available.

Review consent whenever finance staff change. A departing finance director can have authority inside the AISP even after their direct bank login is removed. Offboarding should therefore cover connected finance applications as well as bank portals and cards.

Check data latency and history limits in the service agreement. Some dashboards are designed for near-real-time cash visibility while others are primarily bookkeeping feeds. Treasury should not make a same-day £2 million funding decision from an app that refreshes one account only twice daily without showing the timestamp clearly.

Decide whether the dashboard is informational or feeds automated decisions. A lending or cash-sweep system that automatically acts on AISP data carries more risk than a human dashboard. If downstream automation exists, data-quality and consent failures need explicit fallback logic.

Review third-party access at least quarterly. Finance apps accumulate over time, and old lenders, cash-flow tools or accounting trials can retain permissions longer than anyone remembers. A simple connected-app register reduces unnecessary exposure to transaction data.

Use a permission matrix when more than one finance application connects to the same accounts. A cash-flow tool may need only balances and transactions, while a lending service may request a broader history. Grant only the access required for the business purpose and record the legal provider behind each connection. The convenience of one-click consent should not turn into permanent visibility for every app the company has ever tested.

Also decide what happens when consent expires or a bank connection breaks. Treasury should know whether the dashboard displays the last successful balance, removes the account or flags the feed as stale. A stale balance that looks current is more dangerous than no balance at all, so timestamp and connection-status data should be visible to users making funding decisions.