Account Connectivity

Account connectivity is the technical link between a bank account and an outside system, such as a budgeting app, a lender, an accounting package or a company's treasury software, that allows the system to read balances and transactions or to start payments from the account. In consumer finance it is usually delivered through an open banking API or, where no API exists, by older screen-scraping methods, often via a data aggregator that maintains connections to thousands of banks. In corporate banking the term also covers host-to-host links, SWIFT connections and bank portals that move statements and payment files between a company and its banks. Good connectivity depends on stable interfaces, clear customer consent and secure authentication. Related ideas include account aggregation, the account information API, bank APIs and API aggregation.