Nationwide’s Head of Internet Banking, Richard Serles, has broken the silence over why the service was turned off over a month ago.
Wesabe user ‘wherestom‘ received a phone call after he went to a Nationwide TalkBack (a face to face feedback session organised by the building society). Richard called personally and explained that it was actually a Microsoft platform that was providing the updates. This shows why they needed Microsoft support, and also the lack of skills in the Nationwide team to continue to manage the service:
The reason they keep harping on about Microsoft Money (even though we do not use it) is that it’s Microsoft’s software they are using to provide the ‘background banking’ service.
This software has had no support from microsoft for several years and supporting it internally was costing a fortune and it never worked properly anyway (missing accounts etc.)
The impact is currently that neither OFX downloads or automatic updates are anywhere on the horizon. wherestom added that “a new e-banking platform is in the works but won’t see the light of day till the middle of 2011″.
So – what’s next?
- Could Wesabe swoop in for Nationwide to replace the defunct MS Money service with their Springboard platform?
- Or do we need to move en-masse to another bank?
- If you’re leaving Nationwide for another bank, which one are you leaving for?
{ 1 trackback }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Smart for Wesabe to provide the Springboard platform. Hopefully we’ll see banks start using it.
As far as transferring banks, I went to RBS. They provide up to 7 years of OFX downloads through their web site. It isn’t automatic/direct connect, but it is the best OFX support I could find.
Thanks for the update G – good to know that RBS have good support for OFX.
I’m going to write up some of the features other banks use so anyone can see the best feature set around. I might drop you an email with some questions about RBS if you don’t mind sharing the info.