Introduction
Wiise is committed to providing the best possible accounting and business management solution for our customers and partners. As part of our continuous improvement, we have decided to implement a parallel pathway for bank feeds, which will allow us to offer more flexibility and choice for our users.
Background
Bank feeds are a key feature of Wiise, as they enable users to automatically import and reconcile transactions from their bank accounts.
We had originally planned to migrate all our customers to Envestnet Yodlee Open Banking bank feeds and deprecate ACSISS direct bank feeds for the following reasons:
- Yodlee Open Banking feeds offer a more comprehensive solution that supports many more banks across Australia and New Zealand than our existing offering.
- The Government introduced Open Banking in 2019 as part of the Consumer Data Right (CDR) as the preferred protocol for the sharing of banking data. Open Banking aims to enable consumers to safely share their data with trusted third parties. Yodlee is a CDR Data Recipient certified by the ACCC.
- We also wanted to provide an uplifted experience via the Role Centre for accountants and business managers that would give users actionable bank reconciliations insights.
The Current CDR Landscape in Australia
Despite rigorous technical and legal due diligence conducted before onboarding this new solution, we have encountered some challenges with the migration to Yodlee Open Banking bank feeds. This has led us to reconsider our approach. The main challenges are:
- The implementation of CDR-compliant Open Banking in Australia is ongoing, and some banks have not yet implemented Open Banking across all their business banking products.
- The Yodlee Open Banking product continues to adapt to the changing Open Banking landscape, which has led to challenges in the availability and behaviour of bank feeds.
- Open Banking puts in place rigorous permissions legislated by government to ensure data security. This requires users to ensure that they have the correct bank authority to share financial data and to explicitly share this via their bank with third parties. This may cause confusion and inconvenience for some users.
Solution
To address these challenges and to de-risk the migration of existing customers to Wiise 2.0, we have decided to implement a parallel pathway for bank feeds, which will allow us to offer both ACSISS direct bank feeds and Envestnet Yodlee Open Banking bank feeds to our users.
This means that for customers who migrate to Wiise 2.0 immediately, we will do so with the same ACSISS bank feed experience they have today. We are working hard to ensure that this experience is as seamless as possible.
Over time, as the Open Banking and CDR experience matures in Australia, we will provide the option for customers and partners to migrate to the Yodlee Open Banking experience, which will have more banking products enabled at the interactive import layer.
It is worth noting that ACSISS does not provide full coverage of banks and that Yodlee’s bank feeds provide a broader range of banking products overall. ACSISS have also moved to roll out Open Banking bank feeds in Australia and their support of direct bank feeds may change to accommodate the new technology.
We will monitor the progress and quality of both ACSISS direct feeds and Yodlee Open Banking bank feeds and communicate any changes or updates to our customers and partners.
Benefits
We believe that this solution will provide the following benefits to our customers and partners:
- It will minimise the disruption and risk of the migration to Yodlee Open Banking feeds, as users will have the option to stay with ACSISS direct bank feeds until they are ready to switch.
- It will maximise the value and choice of the bank feed service, as users will have access to both Open Banking and direct bank feeds, depending on their preferences and needs.
- It will ensure the security and reliability of the bank feed service, as we will be able to leverage the strengths of both the ACSISS and Yodlee platforms.
Next Steps and Timing
- ACSISS roll-out for Wiise Australia 2.0: Wiise has launched a project at the highest priority to roll out ACSISS data feeds in the Wiise 2.0 environment. Wiise has completed regression testing and is currently in the final UAT stages of testing. Subject to this testing, we anticipate this to be available by Monday 2 September.
- Yodlee Bank Feed Updates in Wiise Australia 2.0 and Wiise New Zealand: Concurrently, Wiise is working with Yodlee Envestnet to upgrade the Open Banking experience for Wiise users and provide more detailed guidance regarding bank permissions for users seeking to implement Open Banking bank feeds. We are currently scoping this project and will provide more details over the coming days.
- Updated bank feed documentation and enablement: We will begin launching further documentation and enablement for partners and customers on our Partner Portal and Knowledge Base and provide links to these as they become available.
- Upgrading to Wiise Australia 2.0: Customers not currently using bank feeds or who do not require banks can proceed to migrate to Wiise Australia 2.0.
Conclusion
We appreciate your support and cooperation in this technical release. We are confident that this solution will provide a better bank feed experience for our customers and partners. If you have any questions or feedback, please contact us at support@wiise.com.
Your team at Wiise will provide updates to this plan in the coming days.