Instead Of Open Banking Should Industry Push For Open Everything?

"Open Banking initiatives are bringing technology at the forefront of finance by encouraging (sometimes even mandating) secure underlying account data sharing by banks. The main purpose is to enable third parties, mostly FinTech players, to utilize the open access to banking data, in order to provide value-add service applications that enable consumers to easier transact, save, borrow, lend and invest their money.

In the UK, for example, with the Open Banking Standard (OBS) becoming reality, an authorized third-party service provider, like an account aggregator, is going to be able to leverage the established API standard to gain access to the variety of customer’s banking data, or even initiate payment transactions - if such power is authorized by the customer. In the rest of Europe, although currently there is no organized initiative to establish an Open Banking API standard like in the UK, there is a clear regulatory mandate for banks to provide open access to their customer’s data and transaction initiation interfaces, to any external party, under the well-known PSD2 initiative. Across North America, where Open Banking is not mandated yet, banks are already taking notice and adjusting their Open Banking positions and strategies for what’s probably coming here eventually at some point.

The way it has been currently put together and promoted, the Open Banking message may be seen as biased against incumbent banks, by favoring FinTech startups and established digital technology companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, Twitter and Facebook."