APPLICATION ECOSYSTEM AND AUTHENTICATION

1 . A method for financial institutions to provide value added services to customers while preserving security of customer financial information comprising:

providing a single point of access to a centralized platform wherein the platform hosts at least one financial application, wherein the financial application is provided by a party other than the customer's financial institution;

enabling the selection and configuration of the at least one financial application;

sharing anonymized customer financial information between the financial institution and the at least one financial application via a single conduit;

analyzing the financial information by the at least one financial application;

receiving results from the at least one financial application via the single conduit; and

displaying the results to the customer.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the financial application is configured to provide one or more of customer offers, fraud detection, purchase insights, statement insights, and user financial dashboards.

3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the centralized platform is configured to provide access to at least one 3 rd party application.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the financial institution selects and configures the one or more financial applications.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the customer selects and configures the one or more financial applications.

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein access to the centralized platform of financial service applications is via at least one of a financial institution dashboard, a user dashboard, a financial web site, a digital wallet, and a separate application.

7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the provider of the centralized platform also acts as the single conduit for information to and from the at least one financial application.

8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the provider of the centralized platform vets the results provided by the at least one financial application before displaying them to the customer.

9 . A method for financial institutions to provide value added services while preserving security of customer financial information, comprising:

providing a single point of access to a centralized platform wherein the platform hosts at least one financial application, wherein the financial application is provided by a party other than the customer's financial institution;

enabling the selection and configuration of the at least one financial application;

encoding customer financial data for input to the selected financial application according to a set of one or more business rules;

anonymizing the customer financial data to be transferred to the selected financial application;

encrypting the customer financial data to be transferred to the selected financial application;

transferring the encrypted customer financial information between the financial institution and the selected financial application via a single conduit;

receiving results from the selected financial application via a single conduit; and

displaying the results from the selected financial application to the customer.

10 . The method of claim 9 , wherein the customer financial data is encrypted using pre-existing keys which have been shared previously.

11 . The method of claim 9 , wherein the customer financial data is transferred using at least one of a cookie, a javascript variable, and a hidden form element.

12 . The method of claim 9 , further comprising sharing information about the financial institution with the selected financial application.