Hi I’ve downloaded the app but there isn’t a co-operative bank on your list what can I do?
Hey @Jen15 - thanks for giving Snoop a try!
Unfortunately Co-op Bank isn’t listed as they don’t provide open banking APIs (which is the secure tech Snoop needs to connect) yet.
Co-op uses an alternative connection method referred to as ‘screen scraping’ and for it to work, a customer has to share log-on credentials with an authorised 3rd party and that service then ‘logs on’ on to the bank on the customer’s behalf.
This method doesn’t work with many of our features and we at Snoop don’t think bank credentials should ever be something you share with a third party. So we’ve never supported this method and we don’t plan to in future.
The good news is that we’ve heard Co-op may change their position and will be falling in line with all the other banks who provide APIs. I can’t give you any timescales on this, but we’d look to support them if and when they become available.
Cara
Hi, any update on when Smile/co-op will be linkable?
I’m afraid we are still waiting for Co-Op to make an API available. Until they do this, I’m afraid we can’t connect with them.
We have heard this is something they are looking to do, but I’m afraid we don’t have any timescales on this.
We’d love to connect with them as we often get asked for it - they are the largest bank that don’t currently provide an Open Banking API. As soon as they are up and running we will be looking to connect with them.
Paul
Sadly not @bross
It’s great that Co-Op seem to finally be starting to develop APIs. However, so far they have only developed something for their business banking customers. This email was from earlier in the summer when we last asked about this.
Hi @Nabil sadly I think they have only given you part of the story.
They do now have some Open Banking APIs available - but only for Business Accounts.
They have no APIs available for Personal Accounts and we’ve been told these are sadly still many months from being available. In fact this is from their last email to us on 9th January (when we last asked their Open Banking team for an update):
“For Personal customers, the release of the API has been delayed and we’re now aiming for the end of December 2023.”
Their customer support team sometimes say they support Open Banking because they have something called a ‘modified customer interface’. This is a type of screen scraping and most 3rd party services like Snoop will not support this method for various reasons. It’s only a very small number of banks who use this old style method. You can read about how this is described by Co-Op here:
We really would love to connect with them if they made it possible. However, we need Open Banking APIs, like all of their competitors provide.
Paul
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they are really poor when it come to technologie, same for the iPhone app, they were far behind competition, unfortunately they will lose customers.
at least they acknowledge its coming by end of the year if we got lucky.
One thing I would say - I’ve never known a bank to launch anything in December… and I’ve also never known a bank to launch something earlier than initially planned 
So if that’s the target now, I would fully expect this to be early 2024 at the earliest 
Sorry, we wish it was faster.
Paul
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It seems that EMMA is now able to connect to Co-op Bank - and you are showing it at coming soon. Any idea when that will be?
Hi @SimonH - we have been working with Co-Op since January on the new APIs. We understand some apps have gone live with Co-Op but we don’t share the view this is quite ready for customers yet.
Co-Op have been very cooperative (if you can excuse the pun!) and have already made changes in recent weeks. We’ve also tested our own accounts with some of our competitor services and we’ve found balances being incorrect, the Android connection flow not working as expected and some credit card transactions don’t look right at all. Like this for example where the merchant/description is not showing:
All of these things we are working on with the bank and expect to have it up and running later this month.
We always prefer to be 100% sure the service is ready for customers, rather than being the ‘first’ app to have it running.
Paul
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