First Direct enhances app with data specialist Bud
First Direct has kicked off an enhancement of its banking app working with UK-based transaction data specialist, Bud.
Work has been underway to integrate Bud’s data enrichment capabilities into the First Direct app. Now live is Bud’s transaction categorisation and merchant identification services, with these available to First Direct customers.
Transactions will be enriched into one of more than 100 categories. The identification service can recognise around 3,000 UK merchants and will display merchant logos for the majority of the transactions it recognises.
Bud’s Merchant ID service uses Open Banking and adds the ability to return the merchant name, logo and added company information to a given transaction, to power insights that drive further actions.
First Direct’s head of innovation and partnerships, Saira Khan, says the work will provide customers with “valuable insight into their spending and provides the business with a set of flexible and robust insights to underpin a suite of exciting new features scheduled for release later this year”.
She adds this is a key step to “challenge the challengers” and promote the financial wellness of First Direct’s customers via the app.
Bud was set up in 2015. Among its investors are 9 Yards Capital, ANZ, Banco Sabadell, HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Investec. Its progress hasn’t always been smooth, with a pivot towards additional sectors aside from finance, following a 20% reduction in headcount in 2019.
