Building a trusted network: How the combination of Mastercard and Finicity is addressing open banking, open finance and beyond

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Finicity’s Ryan Christiansen offers an overview of open banking and open finance – and the part that Finicity and Mastercard are playing.

For Ryan, open banking is a major global trend, with different markets taking industry-led or regulatory-driven approaches. While many consumers may not have heard of fintech, they are using it – and growth is explosive. Open banking is the next great evolution in financial services, following on from online and mobile banking.

Mastercard’s purchase of Finicity is an exciting combination. Mastercard offers a global trusted brand and partnerships around the world, while Finicity has open banking expertise and connections to over 11,000 financial institutions. Open banking is both a challenge and an opportunity.

Open banking is a consumer-centred experience connecting consumer data to financial experiences. Mastercard and Finicity share a common vision of putting consumers in control of their data. That customer-centred approach is encapsulated in the CATTS principles:

• Control – consumers control how their data is used, with informed consent
• Access – consumers have complete and easy access to their personal financial data
• Transparency – consumers know who is accessing their data and how it is being used
• Traceability – consumers can follow data through the network, and have a right to be forgotten
• Security – data is properly secured to the standards consumers should expect

The success of open finance relies on the ecosystem of financial data stewards, consumers/SMEs and apps/services all working together. For example, Finicity saw the need for a specification that allows rapid onboarding of an app so that financial institutions can disclose to consumers which apps they are permissioning. Finicity developed the specification – and then donated it to the industry-led standards organisation FDX.

Working together and building trust can enable all sorts of innovation: not just apps/solutions, but better access to capital, improving financial literacy, evolution in credit review, new ways of moving money, financial inclusion and faster adoption of digital technologies.

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