UK personal finance Web sites thisismoney.co.uk and money.telegraph.co.uk have introduced comparative account aggregation services for users, in direct competition with Internet bank Egg and Citibank.
Both portal sites are using own-branded versions of moneysupermarket.com's View My Accounts software. The package displays all of a user's personal account information on a single Web page, alongside a list of "best buy" products from competitor institutions.
Chris Nixon, general manager, moneysupermarket.com, comments: "We believe that comparative account aggregation is a killer application. There really will be nowhere to hide for uncompetitive providers."
Citibank and Egg are the only two UK banks to offer consolidated account aggregation services to UK consumers. Disagreements between banks over information sharing, security and data protection have so far stymied the roll-out of similar services across the broader community.
Moneysupermarket claims its software offers consumers the same security protection that banks currently offer and will be fully audited to ensure that best security practice is employed throughout.
Consumer account login details are encrypted using DES3 technology and all communication between View My Accounts servers, the consumer's PC and, for example, their bank, is scrambled using 128-bit SSL encryption. The firm says it will indemnify every user against any losses suffered as a direct result of unauthorised access and/or transactions that are caused by negligence or fraud on the part of moneysupermarket.com.