Chase Manhattan Bank customers must choose, or ''opt in,'' to share their personal data. A bigger concern is security. By year's end, the Federal Reserve Board expects to issue guidelines. The board may determine that both entities are responsible, says Fed lawyer Kyung Cho-Miller. That could leave banks holding the bag, because most Web start-ups have little cash.
Aggregation also raises thorny questions about who owns information on the Internet.
But First Union dropped the high-profile lawsuit, concluding that customers are entitled to share their account information with aggregators. She cites a judge's recent preliminary injunction barring online auction aggregator Bidder's Edge from placing eBay's listings on its own site. The judge said Bidder's Edge trespassed on, and potentially damaged, eBay's servers. Yet banks are teaming up with aggregators instead of fighting them. Aggregators dispute the notion that consumers will spend less time at their bank's Web site if they get the bare bones at the aggregator. ''We keep their site in front of customers in a summarized view so they go there more often,'' Taschetta contends.