Account aggregation

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Account aggregation sometimes also known as financial data aggregation is a method that involves compiling information from different accounts, which may include bank accounts, credit card, payroll accounts,^[1] investment accounts, and other consumer or business accounts, into a single place. This may be provided through connecting via an API to the financial institution or provided through "screen scraping" where a user provides the requisite account-access information for an automated system to gather and compile the information into a single page. The security of the account access details as well as the financial information is key to users having confidence in the service.^[2]

The database either resides in a web-based application or in client-side software. While such services are primarily designed to aggregate financial information, they sometimes also display other things such as the contents of e-mail boxes and news headlines.^[3]