A new service enabling people to access all their online financial information in one place has gone live in Britain for the first time.

The "accountunity" service was introduced this week and is the result of a partnership between Silkmoth, a Manchester-based software company, and an Australian technology firm. It pulls together information about all the different accounts an individual runs online and presents it on a single web page.

This one-click access to a person's entire online account information has been dubbed "aggregation". More than a million people in the United States are believed to be using such services to view and monitor their current accounts, investments, mortgages or credit cards, plus see emails and any bills they pay over the internet.

Alex Grinberg, chief executive of the Australian account aggregation company eWise, said the free service gave users access to a growing list of more than 25 online accounts including those offered by banks, such as HSBC and Egg, stockbrokers, loyalty programmes such as Air Miles and phone companies such as BT.

Some of the US services have caused controversy because of the requirement that people disclose to the aggregator company their user names and passwords for all the accounts they wish to add to their personal page. But Mr Grinberg said that, with accountunity, customers' private details were stored in encrypted form on their own PCs, and no third party could see or gain access to this information.

To start taking advantage of the service, users download an application from the accountunity website www.accountunity.com This effectively enables the PC to enter the various account websites on an individual's behalf, call up the latest information and transmit it back to the page.

EWise is already running an aggregation service in Australia, claiming to provide "easy and secure access" to more than 80 online accounts including banks, credit cards, phone companies, email and share trading.

Accountunity is likely to face competition from banks such as Barclays and others thought to be planning British services.