UK remote bank first direct has extended its account aggregation service to incorporate non-banking Web sites in an effort to free Net users from online 'password purgatory'.
The bank has now added 56 non-financial sites to the 63 banking organisations originally covered by its Internet Banking Plus service. It is the first move into non-financial online services by first direct, the telebanking offshoot of HSBC.
Internet Banking plus, which was launch in April 2004 and is currently used by more than 40,000 people, uses a single set of security credentials to access a user’s entire online portfolio in combination with a downloaded 'digital safe' which stores their security details using 3 Key triple DES encryption.
Richard Kimber, first direct’s chief executive says: "We have expanded Internet Banking plus to make life as simple and easy-to-manage as possible for anyone who uses the Internet, by enabling them to view many accounts, from Yahoo to British Gas, eBay to Nectar, and current account to credit card, in one place, using one easy-to-remember set of security credentials."
He says existing Internet Banking plus users have warmed to the new additions and are aggregating their non-financial services at the rate of one every two minutes.