FDATA North America October 2022 Newsletter

by rebecca

Welcome to FDATA North America’s monthly newsletter! These regular dispatches will share developments from our organization and our 30+ member companies, all of which are promoting financial access and inclusion with open finance use cases. We also include a list of upcoming industry events, and coverage of any market developments that impact fintech innovators.

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Monthly FDATA Member Spotlight: Flinks

This month’s FDATA Member Spotlight features Dominique Samson, VP of Corporate Affairs at Flinks, who explains how improved data connectivity can reduce friction in the financial services ecosystem and benefit consumers with limited credit history:

FDATA NA News

FDATA submits comments to Canada’s Standing Committee on Finance (FINA) as part of its 2023 pre-budget consultations. In our submission to FINA, we called on the Canadian government to include language in Budget 2023 asserting the importance of governance in an open banking framework. We also argued that:

  • Any open banking governance entity must be neutral, transparent, and nimble;
  • Lawmakers allocate sufficient and sustained funding in Budget 2023 toward the implementation of an open banking framework and governance entity;
  • Lawmakers include language in Budget 2023 outlining its approach to Open Finance, the next logical step after Open Banking; and
  • The framework must truly unlock market innovation and competition to benefit Canadian consumers and businesses by including an amendment to the Canadian Payments Act to grant federally regulated payment service providers access to Payment Canada’s forthcoming real-time retail payment system and make them eligible for membership in Payments Canada.

We also asserted that any open banking governance entity in Canada must be:

  • Neutral and not controlled by any particular stakeholder(s) with commercial interests in the ecosystem;
  • Transparent in that it invites and considers stakeholder input and subjects its decisions to an open, publicly visible process); and
  • Nimble and capable of making binding decisions relatively quickly and without undue bureaucracy, and has all stakeholders in the open banking system agreeing to comply with the decisions and determinations made by the open banking governance entity as a condition of being active in the market.

FDATA Highlights Importance of API Standards and Monitoring. As both Canada and the United States continue to move toward open banking via APIs, it is essential that minimum API standards be set in open banking frameworks to ensure that consumers and SMEs have uninterrupted access to their financial data. To this end, FDATA has developed four principles that will be critical to the design of a well-implemented API environment in North America. These principles cover data scope, reliability standards, fallback options, and the necessity of establishing a neutral monitoring agency.

 

Member News & Activity

APImetrics CEO David O’Neill joined a live webcast to discuss five lessons they’ve learned monitoring Open Banking stacks over the last three years. O’Neill also discussed what the experience has taught the company about DevOps in regulated sectors where it’s possible for two teams of operations engineers to face off in front of a regulator and be able to prove that they are both in the wrong.

Basis Theory was tagged as one of Business Insider’s “Most Promising Fintech Companies.”

Fiserv posted a new episode of its podcast, “Blurring the Line Between Fintechs and Financial Institutions,” which featured David McIninch discussing how the evolution is changing how people move and manage money while providing growing opportunities for financial institutions.

Flinks product marketer Alex Coleman published a new blog post, “Open Banking, Open APIs, OAuth: What Does It All Mean?,” which covered existing data aggregation methods, the transition to open banking, how APIs and Open APIs work, an intro into OAuth, and the security and legal implications of open banking.

MX’s Nicky Klein, VP of Open Finance, spoke at MX’s Money Experience Summit saying “not embracing open banking is hurting your business. If you don’t enable your customers to connect with the apps they want, they’re going to bank elsewhere.” MX also announced record-setting gains in financial data connectivity and the general availability of new product innovation and new implementation partners that bolster the MX platform.

Plaid published a new blog post Q&A with Colby Ross from Project Finance, a digital banking solution for banks and credit unions. Ross shared with Plaid how his company is using their Core Exchange integration to remove credential sharing, help customers achieve financial wellness, and build a customized world-class digital banking experience.

Validify has partnered with Insight, a financial services software provider, to be their selected banking and payment data provider to offer new, exclusive services to their customers. The two companies have collaborated to create custom, proprietary solutions, including TruBank and TruDDA. These powerful data services will be available only on Insight’s DecisionCloud Platform for the exclusive benefit of their customers.

Vaultree has shared the first episode of Vaultree Cast, a podcast “from data privacy enthusiasts to data privacy enthusiasts.” In this first episode, Thiago Alves, Head of Security Research at Mosyle, shares valuable cybersecurity career advice.

Vopay CEO Hamed Arbabi sat down with FinTec Buzz to chat about his career, payments modernization, entrepreneurship, how the pandemic has highlighted a strong need for innovation, and how businesses need to update legacy software and innovate their processes.

Events and Submission Deadlines

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