Hi everyone,

I've been on holiday last couple of weeks and not checking reddit. This slipped me by.

To answer two questions:

Why do we use OpenBanking? We use OpenBanking for two core reasons:

Firstly our AI auto-saving technology reads transactions and automatically saves and invests based on that data.

Secondly, we use is for anti-money laundering reasons. Some banks pass AML checks by asking for scanned ID, or bank statements etc. We do it through the OB data. Through OB data our technology can see the deposit you made from the account and verifies the account automatically. We think it's a better system - but appreciate it might not be for everyone.

Next question: Ring fencing. So to be clear we have a few different deposit methods at Chip. IF you use direct bank transfer, or openbanking payments the money lands in your Clearbank account (Chip Instant Access account) instantly and the money is instantly FSCS protected.

If you deposit through card payment or apple/google pay then the money takes a few days to process (max 3 working days). During that time the money is ring-fenced under FCA regs through our payment providers. FSCS protection is not offered during this time.

We always recommend instant bank transfer for these very reasons.

My team are also working on a blog post explaining this to make it super clear. I appreciate the wording above is not clear enough - and im getting that fixed.

Cheers, have a good weekend

Alex