The UK's Competition and Markets Authority has written to Barclays and Lloyds about a series of failures to make accurate and comprehensive data on its products and services available through open APIs.
Under the Open Banking provisions of the Retail Banking Market Investigation Order 2017, big banks are required to make accurate, comprehensive and up to date product and service information continuously available through APIs so that third parties can use the data.
Barclays published inaccurate information 13 times, ranging from overstating the number of ATMs available to customers to posting the incorrect debit interest rates for its SME lending products. Several of the mistakes persisted for more than a year.
Lloyds breached the order 10 times, also through publishing inaccurate information.
In letters to both banks, the CMA says: "Failure to make continuously available accurate, comprehensive and up to date information on products and services can mean that consumers take wrong decisions and they may therefore choose financial products or services which are not best suited to their needs."
The banks have taken actions to address the issues, with Barclays introducing manual controls to check data accuracy and rolling out staff training on open banking API compliance.
Read the CMA letter to Barclays:
Download the document now 149.4 kb (PDF File)