New Zealand is a world leader in accounting technologies. Several companies have made their mark on the international stage.
One of the country’s most important and successful technology contributions has been the creation of data aggregation services for accounting purposes, pioneered by BankLink more than 25 years ago.
When transaction records for different businesses are gathered at a central site and then distributed to the appropriate accountant or business, significant cost and time efficiencies are achieved as the transaction data can be automatically integrated into an accounting solution.
As a provider of these services in New Zealand and Australia, we now gather data for 470,000 bank accounts and distribute it to nearly 5,000 accountants.
Remarkably, it’s only in the past five years that the rest of the world has cottoned on to this Kiwi innovation.
The automatic importation of transaction data is now expected with online accounting services and is just as desirable with desktop software.
The increasing popularity of using electronic bank transaction records for accounting purposes has led to the introduction of another data aggregation technique by some parties.
Commonly known as “screen scraping”, it involves the business passing their internet banking login and password details on to a third party which stores those details. That third party then automatically logs in to the business’ internet banking account at regular intervals, copies their transaction details and supplies them to their accounting services provider.
At BankLink, we believe screen scraping is not a process that is in the best interests of businesses or accountants. There are three main reasons why we have taken this view.
The first relates to security and liability. If an account holder discloses login and password details to a third party, they are likely to be breaking the terms and conditions of their internet banking agreement. These usually state that an account holder should not provide their login and password details to any other party. Most agreements then exclude the bank from liability for any fraud on the account if these details have been passed on to any party. Similarly, the terms and conditions of screen scrapers and accounting services using them place liability back onto the account holder.
We believe that many people using screen scraping services may not be fully aware of these implications. Ethically, BankLink does not support data aggregation services that expose businesses to liability for any fraud on their account – even if it is unrelated to the service.
It should be noted that the companies which provide screen scraping services for the accounting market do appear to take security very seriously. They have to, considering the value of the data they store and its obvious appeal to criminals. While the risk of anything occurring with screen scraping may be low, the consequences of any fraud occurring will be catastrophic for all parties involved. BankLink is not prepared to place such a mission-critical activity in the hands of a third party.
The second reason is reliability. As there is no contractual relationship between financial institutions and screen scrapers, there is no reason for the institution to inform the screen scraper when they make changes to their internet banking platform.
Such changes can break the ability for the automatic screen scraping process to work. These breakages occur often enough for there to be a steady stream of frustrated users publicly venting their annoyance with their accounting services provider.
The third reason is accuracy and completeness. In many cases internet banking is a separate system that selects specific information from the core banking platform and then presents that data to the user. Because of this disconnection, screen scraping does not always pick up the full range of data that BankLink currently accesses direct from the core banking platform. For example, narrations are sometimes missing. Another problem with screen scraping is that duplicate transactions are sometimes downloaded, causing frustration for users.
BankLink has always gathered data under the terms of a supply agreement with each financial institution. The institutions put stringent conditions on us to ensure the accuracy and security of this “read only” data and it is supplied direct from their core banking platform.
By obtaining data in this way, BankLink does not need to access and store any internet banking password or login details and cannot make any transactions. We simply act as a conduit of data from bank to accountant and business.
The accountancy profession is based on a strong ethical foundation – security, confidentiality and respect for the law, as well as the provision of reliable and accurate services. As a key provider to the profession, BankLink shares that ethical foundation. We believe that screen scraping simply doesn’t meet those standards and exposes businesses to unnecessary risk. BankLink does not endorse its use in the accounting services market.
Source: http://www.nzica.com/News/Archive/2012/August/Screen-scraping-warning.aspx
Note:
One of the country’s most important and successful technology contributions has been the creation of data aggregation services for accounting purposes, pioneered by BankLink more than 25 years ago.
When transaction records for different businesses are gathered at a central site and then distributed to the appropriate accountant or business, significant cost and time efficiencies are achieved as the transaction data can be automatically integrated into an accounting solution.
As a provider of these services in New Zealand and Australia, we now gather data for 470,000 bank accounts and distribute it to nearly 5,000 accountants.
Remarkably, it’s only in the past five years that the rest of the world has cottoned on to this Kiwi innovation.
The automatic importation of transaction data is now expected with online accounting services and is just as desirable with desktop software.
The increasing popularity of using electronic bank transaction records for accounting purposes has led to the introduction of another data aggregation technique by some parties.
Commonly known as “screen scraping”, it involves the business passing their internet banking login and password details on to a third party which stores those details. That third party then automatically logs in to the business’ internet banking account at regular intervals, copies their transaction details and supplies them to their accounting services provider.
At BankLink, we believe screen scraping is not a process that is in the best interests of businesses or accountants. There are three main reasons why we have taken this view.
The first relates to security and liability. If an account holder discloses login and password details to a third party, they are likely to be breaking the terms and conditions of their internet banking agreement. These usually state that an account holder should not provide their login and password details to any other party. Most agreements then exclude the bank from liability for any fraud on the account if these details have been passed on to any party. Similarly, the terms and conditions of screen scrapers and accounting services using them place liability back onto the account holder.
We believe that many people using screen scraping services may not be fully aware of these implications. Ethically, BankLink does not support data aggregation services that expose businesses to liability for any fraud on their account – even if it is unrelated to the service.
It should be noted that the companies which provide screen scraping services for the accounting market do appear to take security very seriously. They have to, considering the value of the data they store and its obvious appeal to criminals. While the risk of anything occurring with screen scraping may be low, the consequences of any fraud occurring will be catastrophic for all parties involved. BankLink is not prepared to place such a mission-critical activity in the hands of a third party.
The second reason is reliability. As there is no contractual relationship between financial institutions and screen scrapers, there is no reason for the institution to inform the screen scraper when they make changes to their internet banking platform.
Such changes can break the ability for the automatic screen scraping process to work. These breakages occur often enough for there to be a steady stream of frustrated users publicly venting their annoyance with their accounting services provider.
The third reason is accuracy and completeness. In many cases internet banking is a separate system that selects specific information from the core banking platform and then presents that data to the user. Because of this disconnection, screen scraping does not always pick up the full range of data that BankLink currently accesses direct from the core banking platform. For example, narrations are sometimes missing. Another problem with screen scraping is that duplicate transactions are sometimes downloaded, causing frustration for users.
BankLink has always gathered data under the terms of a supply agreement with each financial institution. The institutions put stringent conditions on us to ensure the accuracy and security of this “read only” data and it is supplied direct from their core banking platform.
By obtaining data in this way, BankLink does not need to access and store any internet banking password or login details and cannot make any transactions. We simply act as a conduit of data from bank to accountant and business.
The accountancy profession is based on a strong ethical foundation – security, confidentiality and respect for the law, as well as the provision of reliable and accurate services. As a key provider to the profession, BankLink shares that ethical foundation. We believe that screen scraping simply doesn’t meet those standards and exposes businesses to unnecessary risk. BankLink does not endorse its use in the accounting services market.
Source: http://www.nzica.com/News/Archive/2012/August/Screen-scraping-warning.aspx
Note:
Delta Ray is experienced web scraping consultant and writes
articles on Yellow
Pages Data Scraping, Screen
Scraping Services, Linkedin
Email Scraping, Amazon Product Scraping, Website Harvesting, IMDb Data
Scraping, Yelp Review Scraping, Screen Scraping Services, Yelp Review Scraping
and yellowpages data scraping.
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