UK Banks

[David Goodenough]

On Tuesday 05 January 2010, David Reiser wrote:
> On Jan 5, 2010, at 12:51 PM, David Goodenough wrote:
> > On Tuesday 05 January 2010, Derek Atkins wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> David Goodenough <david.goodenough at linkchoose.co.uk> writes:
> >>> On Tuesday 05 January 2010, Paulo J. Matos wrote:
> >>>> Hi all,
> >>>>
> >>>> Is there any bank in the UK where you can automatically download 
the
> >>>> statement to gnucash without having to download statement to file
> >>>> manually and then import in gnucash?
> >>>>
> >>>> Cheers,
> >>>
> >>> I would also be interested to know if there are any UK banks to which
> >>> you can upload an OFX file to initiate transactions.
> >>
> >> Unfortunately GnuCash does not support OFX Upload, and probably 
never
> >> will due to lack of an open test platform.  Are YOU willing to let a
> >> developer use YOUR account to test transaction initiation?  ;-)
> >>
> >>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> >>> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
> >>
> >> -derek
> >
> > My question was a general one, not about GnuCash.  However as with
> > payment gateways I would expect that test systems were available and
> > that the bank would reject (with meaningful errors) any badly constructed
> > data.
> 
> Your assumption about test system availability is overly optimistic with
>  respect to OFX. Intuit has never made a test server available at a price
>  anyone other than a bank or commercial bank/credit union service
>  organization would be willing to pay. And they are pretty much the only
>  game in town for OFX servers. The only other servers available are from
>  individual banks who decided to roll their own software. I can't imagine
>  _any_ of those banks allowing outsiders access to their server for
>  testing.
> 
> > David
> 
> Dave
> --
> David Reiser
> dbreiser at earthlink.net
> 
well the real answer to that is that those responsible for the standards
should be responsible for such facilities and the testing of software so
that the banks have to accept data that passes the test.  I had heard
that in Germany there were banks that allowed uploads, in which case
they must have had test facilities, but I am not sure that they use OFX
and I am not sure that what I heard is right.

David