Managing finances online is no longer just about checking a bank balance on your phone. Since the implementation of the European directive PSD2, the tools available for tracking, planning, and optimizing money have multiplied.
Account aggregators, tax simulators, automated savings vaults: the offerings have been structured around secure API connections, replacing the old methods of aggregation through login scraping. The current landscape deserves an examination of what truly works and what is merely marketing.
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Open banking and account aggregation: what PSD2 has changed
Before PSD2, accessing all your bank accounts, savings accounts, and investments from a single interface meant entrusting your credentials to a third-party provider. The risk was real, and the practice was legally ambiguous.
The directive required banks to open their data via secure APIs. Services like Bankin’, Linxo, or Finary leverage these APIs to consolidate current accounts, PEA, life insurance, and sometimes crypto portfolios into a single dashboard. Secure API aggregation has replaced login scraping, which has reduced the risks associated with sharing credentials.
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Individuals who spread their savings across multiple institutions can find, in principle, on the Mes Liens Favoris finance site additional resources to identify these aggregation tools and compare their scopes.
However, not all banks implement APIs with the same reliability. Some users report frequent disconnections or synchronization delays that make tracking less smooth than promised. The quality of the experience depends as much on the chosen aggregator as on the bank involved.
Neobanks and integrated savings functions: gadget or real lever
Boursorama, Revolut, N26, or Bunq no longer just offer a current account. These neobanks now integrate features that previously belonged to third-party applications: automatic expense categorization, savings vaults by goal, rounding payments to savings.
Automatic rounding redirects each payment to a savings vault. On a purchase of 3.40 euros, 0.60 euros is set aside. The mechanism seems trivial, but over several months, the accumulated amounts become noticeable.
The limitation of these integrated tools lies in their scope. A savings vault at Revolut does not replace a diversified wealth strategy. And automatic expense categorization remains improvable: a transfer to a relative is sometimes classified as “leisure,” a professional subscription as “personal expense.” Manually correcting these errors takes time, which reduces the benefit of automation.
Criteria for evaluating an integrated savings function
- The remuneration of the savings vault: some offer no return, which amounts to letting money sit idle without interest
- The possibility of scheduling automatic transfers to an external savings account (livret A, LDDS) rather than remaining captive to the neobank’s ecosystem
- The granularity of categorization: the ability to create your own categories, split a transaction, tag business expenses
Tax simulators and retirement projection tools: undercovered angles
The majority of articles on personal finance stop at budgeting and savings. Tax simulation tools and retirement projection remain under-documented, even though they address concrete questions: what will be the impact of a rental investment on my taxes? What capital should I accumulate to maintain my standard of living after 62?
Platforms like Climb (formerly Tacotax) or the simulators provided by the public service (impots.gouv.fr) allow you to estimate your tax situation before making an investment decision. A tax simulator prevents discovering an unpleasant surprise in September.
For retirement, Info Retraite (the GIP Union Retraite) offers an official simulator that aggregates rights acquired from all schemes. The data comes directly from the funds, which limits projection errors. Field feedback varies on this point: some users notice discrepancies between the simulated amount and the pension actually paid, especially for mixed careers (employee then self-employed).
What these simulators do not do
No public simulator correctly integrates complex tax exemption schemes (Malraux, historical monuments, forestry groups). For these cases, a wealth management advisor remains necessary. Online tools cover common situations, not advanced wealth structures.
Financial data security: what to check before signing up
Entrusting your banking data to an aggregator or third-party application requires a minimum of vigilance. The European regulatory framework imposes standards, but implementation varies from one player to another.
- Check that the provider is registered as a payment service agent or payment institution with the ACPR (Prudential Control and Resolution Authority)
- Prefer tools that use bank API connections compliant with PSD2, rather than those that still require direct login credentials
- Review the data retention policy: some applications store transaction history for several years, while others limit it
- Ensure that strong authentication (two-factor) is offered at registration and at each reconnection
An unregistered tool with the ACPR should not receive your banking credentials. This verification takes less than two minutes on the ACPR’s online register.
Online financial optimization tools have gained reliability since the opening of bank APIs. Their usefulness depends on each user’s profile: an employee with two accounts and a livret A does not have the same needs as a multi-banked self-employed person with a PEA and rental property. Choosing a tool suited to one’s actual situation remains more effective than piling up applications without coherence.