After engaging with both 22seven and Discovery on this issue. It seems Discovery bank has no intentions of allowing 22seven to ever intergrate with them again. I am sure the team at 22seven is doing their best to fix this, but I think we should all do our part too. Here is a letter that I wrote to the CEO of Discovery bank:
Dear Hylton,
I have been using Discovery Bank since it's inception. For the most part I have been a happy customer. Recently, the integration with Discovery Bank on 22Seven has stopped working. I am sure you are familiar with 22seven, it's a popular budgeting tool used by over 1million South Africans. I don't work for 22seven, but I have been using their service longer than I have been using Discovery Bank.
After engaging with Discovery Customer Support on twitter it seems that Discovery has no intentions of ever restoring this integration between Discovery Bank and 22Seven. This is a mistake.
Here's why: since I became a customer of Discovery bank, I have been impressed with how the Bank conducts itself. Unlike other banks, I didn't have to wait in queues. Even when phoning the call centre to get a document that the app doesn't provide, I was impressed because your staff were polite and efficient. They delivered on what they said they were going to do and I didn't have to follow up on them.
After engaging with your Customer Support staff recently on twitter it seems that you guys have no intentions of restoring the integration with 22seven over concerns about Data Security. I understand that User Data and the way companies collect data is a touchy subject these days. I am happy to consent to the collection of this data. Perhaps 22seven should be more transparent about the data they are collecting and how they are using it.
The future of banking in South Africa is one where all banks have an open API that allows third party app developers to enhance people's banking and financial management. Not, hamper it.
22Seven's mission is to help South African's manage their money better. Instead of hampering this mission, if Discovery really cared about their customers they'd be assisting with it.
Companies like Easy Equities are partnering up with banks like Capitec Bank. This is a sign of a forward thinking business mindset. I am begging you, please don't fall into the same ignorant bureaucratic mindset as the older banks in South Africa.
By obliterating the banking branch, and allowing your customers to do all their banking from home, Discovery were disruptors. I want to encourage you to continue disrupting, but do it in a way that promotes good financial health in South Africans. Work with the guys like 22seven that are doing good work. Don't try close off your bank from third party app development to protect your own business interests, you'll only upset your customers and someone else will come along and do it better.
Hylton, I hope you understand where I am coming from and seriously consider cooperating with 22seven.
Regards,
Ross Griffin
If you'd like to do something similar, and I'd encourage you to, you can email the Discovery CEO at:
Comments
Hi everyone,
Just an update update the status of Discovery Bank accounts in 22seven.
As mentioned above, Discovery Bank has requested that 22seven collects data via a direct software integration. This usually takes time to build, but Discovery has committed to integrating with 22seven within 1 month. So, we're asking for your patience while we work together to get things back up and running as quickly as possible :)
Shout if you have any other questions in the meantime!
Hi Ross,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with Discovery Bank! We appreciate your eagerness to help us resolve this challenge.
We’ve been in direct communication with Discovery Bank over the past month and progress has been slower than we hoped. While we wait for Discovery Bank to develop its APIs, which we will fully support when built, screen-scraping is a safe and practically proven alternative for the thousands of affected Discovery customers using 22seven.
Screen-scraping has been used by 22seven since 2012 to help over 420k South Africans securely link over 1.3m accounts. Locally, identical data collection is used by Investec and Standard Bank, and internationally by the likes of Paypal. Here's more about our security and how we're (and you're) insured: https://22seven.com/security
Also, here's our privacy policy (which we're mighty proud of) where we detail why your data is private and will always belong to you: https://22seven.com/legal/privacy
Ross, thanks for this initiative.
I think it is very clear that Discovery is being deceptive here. Their "security" concerns are not valid for obvious reasons that we all know. If they were serious about these concerns they would support read-only login profiles like FNB does.
I think it is logical that they are developing a competing product:
Lydon, at some point, and that point is coming up very soon, you're gonna have to share an ETA for this new API they are developing for you. I have my doubts about that as well if they see you as a competitor in the budgeting and financial data space they will drag the process out as long as possible.
We're all getting very close to the 3 month window where we if we sync our accounts after that point we are gonna have missing data which completely throws out our long term data. If this new API won't be ready in time for that I would prefer to know ASAP.
We need some insight into the future so that we can make plans and provision and take appropriate action in the present.
I think it goes without saying that it is Discovery at fault here and the 22seven team have been champs as per usual. Keep it up and thanks for creating such an excellent tool that has completely transformed my life for the better.
Hi Martin,
Thanks for adding your views! We're regularly following up with Discovery Bank and hope they will share an ETA with us soon. In the meantime, we'd like them to allow us to continue gathering data via screen scraping until their API is ready.
We share your concerns about the long term effects on your data, so we're in the process of finalising support for Discovery Bank PDF statement imports. We know this isn't ideal, but the feature will at least allow you to import your Discovery Bank data to 22seven when your monthly statements become available so you don't experience missing transactions. We're also investigating the feasibility of importing CSV files containing your Discovery Bank transactions to 22seven, which you're able to regularly generate on the Discovery Bank website using the Smart Search feature.
We'll keep everyone posted on news regarding all of these developments :)
It's been almost two months, discovery bank integration is still broken and so is statements imports.
Could we please have an ETA? An actual, realistic one, please.
Hi Ross,
Apologies for the delayed reply.
We sent out an updated ETA via email on 22 September and that ETA still stands (towards the end of October). Shout if you didn't receive that mail and I'll be happy to share it directly.
You should also have received an email last week with instructions on how to use our new CSV imports feature for Discovery Bank, which provides an interim solution for importing Discovery Bank transactions to 22seven. Let us know if you're having any trouble using that feature :)
Hi,
I am struggling with integrating all my Discovery products. Please advise on whether this problem was eventually sorted? If not, are there any alternative methods a Discovery customer can use?
Regards,
Sine
Hi there,
Our direct integration with Discovery Bank launched in 2021. If you're having trouble linking or updating your existing accounts, please ping us via thesvens@22seven.com and we'll be happy to take a look :)
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