Author: 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.

Know someone who’d like to receive these monthly updates? Send them here to sign up!

Monthly FDATA Member Spotlight: Betterment

In this Member Spotlight, Betterment’s Associate General Counsel Josh Rubin explains how access to consumer-permissioned financial data is critical to Betterment’s ability to offer high quality, low-cost advice to everyday investors:

FDATA NA News

FDATA To Host Virtual US Reporter Briefing on Open Banking and Section 1033 Rulemaking

Later this month, FDATA North America will host a virtual reporter briefing covering open banking in the United States and the status of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Section 1033 rulemaking. As the CFPB works to convene a SBREFA panel as part of this rulemaking, the briefing will feature insights from FDATA North America Executive Director Steve Boms, and representatives from five member companies including Plaid, MX, Trustly, Envsetnet, Morningstar, and Petal. Individuals interested in attending should contact [email protected].

FDATA NA Welcomes Newest Member Atomic Financial

FDATA North America is excited to announce its newest member Atomic Financial. Atomic is a Utah-based fintech that builds infrastructure for connecting payroll accounts to other apps, which can help with money management and income verification for lending.

Member News & Activity

Basis Theory published a new primer entitled “Data Security 101”, complete with visuals and examples, to help explain how encryption works to business leaders and product managers. Since there are many different ways to encrypt and decrypt data, uderstanding the fundamentals of data encryption can help design those solutions and remove some of the pain points.

BillGO published a new blog post entitled “Four Ways Your Consumer Benefit from Modern Bill Pay,” which details how easy, centralized biller set-up, secure payments using a virtual card, and instantaneous payments, confirmations, notifications and reminders provide value to customers.

Codat has joined the consortium of fintech and security compliance companies, supporting the Open Finance Data Security Standard (OFDSS), a proposed framework of requirements that address security risks commonly encountered by emerging fintechs that manage consumer financial information. The OFDSS is focused on setting a common standard for data security in the Open Finance industry and is designed to be a living document that will evolve over time to meet the needs of the industry, incorporate new technology, and mitigate emerging risks.

Envestnet has released a new report entitled “The Intelligent Financial Life: The Unexpected Intersection Between Technology, Clarity, and the Human Connection.” This report explores how clients’ attitudes toward financial advice, technology, and behaviors differ from one generation to the next.

Fiserv General Manager of Aggregation and Information Services , Jamie DelMedico, joined the Tearsheet Podcast to discuss how the evolution of data processes are helping drive the push toward open finance. Jamie explained how “the whole idea of open finance is powered by data, whereby the data from a financial institution or brokerage is pulled into an experience that then powers some other third-party experience…data is the crux of open finance.” He also shared some of Fiserv’s open finance use-cases and the potential of “alternative” financial data to expand access to credit.

Kabbage has been listed on this year’s Top 100 Financial Technology Companies by The Financial Technology Report. This recognition showcases its dedication for small businesses and its efforts to provide them with innovative products.

Morningstar announced an upcoming webinar entitled “Why open banking data access is essential for wealth management”, which will feature speakers from two FDATA NA Members as well as its Executive Director Steve Boms. The discussion will focus on how the current state of open banking in the US is rapidly evolving, why open banking is so significant for advisors and investors, how high-quality data makes a difference in powering investment solutions, and what to look for when partnering with a wealth data experts.

MX’s Lexi Hall sat down for a Q&A with Insider Intelligence, where she discussed the state of open banking regulation in the United States and the CFPB’s Section 1033 rule. She noted that “what’s exciting about open finance is that there is consensus around it….the industry has consensus on about 85% or 90% of the 1033 rule that the CFPB is considering. Some of the nuts and bolts that are still being decided, but we got here because the industry figured quite a lot of it out on its own.”

Petal was included in Forbes and TrueBridge Capital’s list of the US’s 25 venture-backed startups most likely to become unicorns. Using machine learning to analyze bank transactions, Petal offers credit cards to people who might previously have been disqualified. Since its 2017 launch, the New York City-based company has issued more than 300,000 cards with its banking partner WebBank.

Plaid’s Global Head of Policy John Pitts joined the Breaking Banks fintech podcast with Brett King to discuss how open banking can drive financial services toward a more consumer-centric model to build trust among users.

Trustly announced a new partnership with Conotoxia to give users a fast, safe way to transfer funds internationally via Open Banking. The company also published a blog post on the status of the developing Open Banking regulations in North America, and another that examines how new account-to-account payment trends are driving up the demand for more Open Banking solutions.

Validify published a new blog post entitled “Say No to Friction! Leverage Bank Data Without the Login” which explains how its frictionless, no login required, banking and payment solutions provideaccess to powerful bank and payment information without the associated friction.

Vopay published a new blog post entitled “Faster Payments: Fund Loans In Real-Time 24/7” which describes how lenders can benefit from real-time payments to rapidly fund their loans, avoid manual bank and credit card disputes, and save on transaction fees.

Xero announced a new partnership with the Canadian bank BMO to help small businesses further automate their bookkeeping tasks. This integration will enable BMO customers to connect directly and help gain back time previously spent on data entry and reconciliation. It will also introduce some new features, including tools to help customers automatically receive their latest transactions and account balances in their Xero account daily, a 1-year transaction and balance history right upon starting, and the ablity to modify or deactivate this integration at any time from their BMO account.

Events and Submission Deadlines

• September 12-14: FinovateFall Conference
• September 12-14: Lend360 Summit
• September 21: Fintech Talents Embedded Finance North America Virtual Event
• September 20-22: MX Money Experience Summit
• October 18-20: TechCrunch Disrupt conference 2022
• November 1-2:CIX SUMMIT 2022
• November 9-10: AI in Finance Summit Toronto
• December 7-8: FDATA Global Open Finance Summit & Awards 2022

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.

Know someone who’d like to receive these monthly updates? Send them here to sign up!

Monthly FDATA Member Spotlight: Trustly

In this interview, Trustly Americas President Pete Ohser explains how consumer-permissioned data access greatly expands options, lowers costs, and removes barriers to financial services, as well as detailing how Trustly has been working with the policymaking and banking communities to make open banking a reality:

FDATA NA News

FDATA Develops Draft Open Banking Privacy Principles 

FDATA North America’s Privacy Working Group, a joint and ongoing effort between representatives from FDATA’s 30+ members, is continuing development of draft set of privacy principles to guide the implementation of open banking in the United States and Canada. These principles include detailed definitions of data types, basic requirements for transparency and liability, governance and oversight requirements, and technology standards for ensuring the privacy of consumer data in an open banking environment. This work will inform FDATA’s input into data privacy discussions taking place in both the U.S. and Canada in the months ahead. In the U.S., House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) recently introduced a financial data privacy discussion draft that, among other priorities, proposes to modernize the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) to include data aggregators under the Act’s framework, and calls for consumers to have increased control over how their financial data is used. In Canada, the government recently tabled bill C-27, which, if enacted would provide federal data privacy and portability standards across the country.

As policymakers in the United States and Canada contemplate the data privacy safeguards for consumers and small businesses in both countries’ open banking frameworks, FDATA NA stands ready to provide its perspective on customer and small business data protection.

Member News & Activity

Basis Theory published two new posts on its blog; One which answered 10 of their most frequently asked questions about data tokenization, and another that provided a brief explainer breaking down the 2022 Nacha Data Protection Requirements.

Betterment, which relies on customer-permissioned financial data to streamline investment decisions, was named “Best Overall Robo Advisor” by The Wall Street Journal because of its competitive fees, investment offerings, and customer support.

BillGO published a blog post entitled, “Why Fintechs Should Invest In Bill Pay Technology,” which featured thoughts from Daniel Hawtof, BillGO’s SVP of Bill Pay Product. Hawtoff said, “Consumers are busy…and real time bill pay is hard to deliver. Most banks and fintechs don’t want to invest the time or resources to build the technology and payment network necessary to make real time — or even same-day payments a reality. But BillGO has built (and continues to invest in) the technology and payment network to ensure we are on the leading edge of real time payments.”

Codat CEO & Co-Founder Peter Lord recently joined Miguel Armaza on the Fintech Leaders podcast to discuss Codat’s origins, its international expansion, how it helps SMBs access credit, and the company’s future plans.

DirectID recently launched a new page on its revamped website explaining how the power of open banking data can scale businesses, drive efficiencies, manage risk, and create fairer outcomes for all. The company also announced a partnership with Mansfield Building to launch an open banking platform to make it easier for mortgage applicants to provide their bank statements online.

EQ Bank has partnered with fellow FDATA member Flinks, a leader in open banking, to provide EQ Bank customers with the ability to share their financial data securely with third-party fintech applications of their choosing. This partnership, and the integration of Flinks Outbound, an open banking environment, provides EQ Bank with the framework to quickly deliver flexible open banking capabilities and easily launch and operate new API data sharing methods while providing the bank with critical new data management capabilities. EQ customers who provide explicit consent will have the visibility into what data are they sharing, with whom, and for how long.

Envestnet Yodlee recently published a free white paper entitled, “Unlocking The Benefits Of U.S. Open Banking,” which provided detailed analysis of how the developing ecosystem of new and improved data access methods between financial institutions, data aggregators, application providers, and consumers offers powerful benefits for those who are ready.

Flinks¸ in addition to its new partnership with EQ Bank, announced a new partnership with Ping, an enterprise identity solutions. This partnership will enabled millions of customers across the U.S. and Canada to link their financial accounts to fintech apps and enjoy new streamlined banking experiences in a safe and compliant way. The new partnership also will help ensure Flinks’ open banking API technology is secure and scalable, allowing hundreds of third-party financial apps to gain instant access to user-permissioned data fast and simply. The customer experience will be seamless, with Flinks handling the user authentication and access on the front end and Ping Identity’s solutions working invisibly on the back end. The partnership enabled Flinks to build and launch its new solution within six months.

Fiserv and fellow FDATA Member MX are joint recipients of the Tearsheet 2022 Data Innovation Award. This award underscores the companies’ roles as leaders in open finance. Fiserv and MX were recognized for enabling consumers to securely and reliably share financial data with their favorite apps or services through direct connections, eliminating the need to share personal credentials such as usernames and passwords with third parties. The award was presented as part of Tearsheet’s DataDay Awards 2022, which recognize and celebrate the best data products, services, and brands powering the modern financial system.

MX has expanded its reach into open banking through partnerships with Sionic Mobile Corp., a provider of consumer-to-business payments technology, and FuturePay Inc., a provider of digital revolving credit solutions for e-commerce merchants and their customers. Sionic is embedding MX’s instant account-verification and account-aggregation services into its consumer microsite and mobile software development kit. FuturePay will integrate MX’s instant account-verification and data-cleansing apps with FuturePay’s MYTab digital revolving credit platform for online merchants, which allows them to offer online shoppers a credit line for making purchases with any merchant in the FuturePay network.

Plaid’s Payment Initiation Service (PIS), an API for real-time payments via Open Banking, received the Highly Commended recognition from FinTech Futures as a Best Real-Time Payments Solution.

Salt Edge published a new blog post entitled, “Three Practical Ways For Any Business To Leverage Open Banking,” which explained the many ways that granting access to businesses bank account data can be leveraged to reduce costs, increase automation, and create seamless experiences for users.

Vopay announced a partnership with Canadian property management software provider Plexflow to create a combined technology that will allow property managers to focus on the service they provide rather than be bogged down by manual processes. With VoPay’s payment technology in place, property managers can verify available funds, facilitate instant rent collection, and streamline the onboarding process for tenants. By managing all payment-related operations from a single portal instead of many, cash flow management, and reconciliation will become a much more fluid process.

Trustly published a new blog post entitled, “How Open Banking Meets The Needs Of The Creator Economy.” The blog post explained how open banking offers more freedom and transparency for individuals no matter the source of income, which is perfect for content creators, small entrepreneurs, and artists, who often need access to different services. They’ve also announced a new partnership with Gr4vy that will allow its online merchants to add Trustly as an Open Banking payment option at checkout.

Xero released the beta version of a new bank statement extraction feature in Hubdoc that will be gradually rolled out over the next few weeks in the United States and Canada. This new beta feature exports transaction data from PDF statements of supported banks into a pre-formatted CSV file that allows manual upload into Xero or QuickBooks Online. It will support debit and credit statements from Royal Bank of Canada, TD Canada Trust, and Chase Bank. To work around bank data access issues in the US and Canada, this feature will only work with digital PDFs downloaded directly from a bank account statement.

Events and Submission Deadlines

• August 15–17: VenCent Fintech Summit
• August 23–25: Fintech DevCon 2022
• August 24-25: XeroCon New Orleans
• September 12-14: FinovateFall Conference
• September 12-14: Lend360 Summit
• September 21: Fintech Talents Embedded Finance North America Virtual Event
• September 20-22: MX Money Experience Summit
• November 1-2:CIX SUMMIT 2022

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.

Know someone who’d like to receive these monthly updates? Send them here to sign up!

FDATA North America Monthly Newsletter for July 2022

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. Know someone who’d like to receive these monthly updates? Send them here to sign up

Monthly FDATA Member Spotlight: Codat

Codat is a fintech that provides a universal API for small business data, which powers integration of products built by other software providers and financial institutions. In this interview, Gabby Macsweeney, Head of Communications and Public Policy, discussed how universal APIs can simplify business processes and inform financial wellness:

FDATA NA News

FDATA Submits Comments to Canada’s OSFI on Draft Guideline B-10: Third Party Risk Management. We recently submitted a comment letter in response to the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions’ (OSFI) public consultation on Draft Guideline B-10: Third Party Risk Management. The letter focused on the interplay between this consultation and the concurrent development of Canada’s open banking framework, particularly the importance of clearly distinguishing third-party providers from open banking providers that will be accredited under the new OB system. The letter also expressed appreciation for OSFI’s clarification that its draft guideline is not intended to impede the establishment of open banking, but stressed that this clarification alone does not satisfactorily address the need to ensure coordination of accreditation for open banking providers

FDATA Develops Draft Open Banking Privacy Principles. FDATA North America’s Privacy Working Group, a joint effort between representatives across FDATA’s 30+ members, has developed a draft set of privacy principles to guide the implementation of open banking in the United States and Canada. These principles include detailed definitions of data types, basic requirements for transparency and liability, governance and oversight requirements, and technology standards for ensuring the privacy of consumer data in an open banking environment. This work is particularly important now because House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) recently introduced a financial data privacy discussion draft, which proposes to modernize the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) to include data aggregators under the GLBA framework, and calls for consumers to have increased control over how their financial data is used, among other priorities. As policymakers in the United States and Canada contemplate the data privacy safeguards for consumers and small businesses in both countries’ open banking frameworks, FDATA NA stands ready to provide its perspective on customer protection.

Member News & Activity

Basis Theory published a blog post entitled “How to implement KYC using data tokenization,” which walked through how data tokenization of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) helps eliminate risks, costs, and constraints stemming from Know Your Customer (KYC) programs. The post also explained the common risks, costs, and limits of KYC implementation.

Betterment published a blog post entitled “Banks, Fintech collaboration key to customer satisfaction,” which explained how the rapidly changing digital lending and payments space could leave less-innovative financial institutions behind. The blog post also suggested that increased partnerships between fintechs and banks could be a mutually beneficial solution to this challenge.

BillGO’s Chief Risk Officer Bryan Kanefield penned a post on the company’s blog describing his views on the delicate balance between risk management and innovation. Kanefield said, “[S]omeone may come up with a great new way to approach a product or change a process…..my role is to think about how it can be responsibly executed while ensuring compliance with existing laws or regulations.” The post also noted that in the past, some traditional FIs voiced concerns that smaller, less-regulated fintechs might be putting them at a disadvantage; but now many FIs now see the value in treating fintechs as collaborators rather than competitors.

Codat’s CEO and Co-Founder Pete Lord sat down for a video interview with PYMTS to discuss how a lack of connectivity impacts small business growth and productivity and what Codat is doing to change it. Lord described how the average SMB is using up to 100 different programs and tools to run and manage their business, and how this lack of connectivity between systems also prevents SMBs from accessing financing in a tight credit market, as telling a story with disheveled data doesn’t fill lenders with confidence.

DirectID announced a partnership with Shieldpay, a secure digital payments firm, to implement DirectID’s open banking-powered bank account verification into the Shieldpay payments engine. DirectID’s Connect widget and Shieldpay’s payment engine will allow customers to transfer funds online with digital escrow and trust services.

EQ Bank published a post on its Education Centre webpage explaining the basics of open banking, how it works, and how it can empower consumers make better banking decisions.

Envestnet Yodlee announced organizational changes to accelerate the growth of the Envestnet financial wellness ecosystem by streamlining its business into three business lines: Envestnet Solutions, Envestnet Data and Analytics, and Envestnet WealthTech.

Flinks held an event to kick off its “Flinks Egage” fireside chat series entitled “Redefining Intelligent Financial Services,” which featured a discussion between Flinks and Provenir on how intelligent financial services have evolved and where they’re going next.

Fiserv announced the rollout of its new Digital Mortgage Center, which enables digital mortgage application access from a desktop, laptop, or mobile device, builds on the existing capabilities of its Mortgage Director core lending ecosystem, and allows lenders to manage pipelines wherever they are. This new platform will ensure secure communication between borrower and lender, contains a borrower loan dashboard allowing borrowers to complete the mortgage process from within one system, and provides loan officers digital access to manage pipelines and take an application in person or over the phone from anywhere.

Hank Payments announced it has entered into a strategic partnership agreement with Fair Fintech Inc. (Fair), a financial services company wealth building digital platform based in Houston, Texas. Under the strategic partnership, Hank and Fair will offer the Fair banking products to Hank consumers, including a 4% Wealth Building Account. Additionally, and as part of the agreement, Fair will expend significant amounts to fund various market development and general marketing efforts to accelerate customer adoption.

Interac hosted the Moneyconf Roundtables at the 2022 CollisionHQ tech conference. Attendees joined in conversation with Interac leaders including Izabela Nanushi on Central Bank Digital Currencies, Ireen Birungi on Cybersecurity, Rob Fodor on Data and AI, and Edwin Lam on the resurgence of QR.

MX’s Chief Product Officer Brett Allred joined the Fintech Café podcast to discuss what he sees as the beginning of the third era of finance: the API era. Allred also shares his background, discusses President Joe Biden’s recent executive order on the CFPB’s 1033 rulemaking and how MX is operating in the space.

Plaid published a blog post announcing the opening of its first Canadian office in Toronto, and a new data access agreement it has signed with the RBC, Canada’s largest bank. The agreement will bring about new secure, API-based financial access for more than 14 million RBC digital clients, who will have the ability to securely connect to the 6,000+ apps and services on Plaid’s data network.

Salt Edge published a blog post explaining how open banking can speed-up the bank customer onboarding process. According to the post, nearly 50% of customers abandon their attempt to sign up for new financial services since the process can take an average of 24 days. The post also explains how Salt Edge’s open banking solutions can help businesses gain access to 5,000+ financial institutions globally to provide customers with a unique, effortless, and safe onboarding experience.

Vopay published a blog post entitled “Transforming Pre-Authorized Debit: Capitalizing On Bank Account Payment Innovation,” which describes how Pre-Authorized debits (PADs) have long been a powerful tool for businesses and consumers, despite recent surges in digital wallets, account-to-account (A2A) payments and buy now, pay later (BNPL) services.

Trustly announced a new partnership with Gr4vy, a leading cloud-native payment orchestration platform (POP). Gr4vy’s online merchants will be able to add Trustly as a payment option, which will enable merchants to streamline and manage payment methods, services, and transactions all in one place.

Xero’s Chief Product Officer Anna Curzon appeared on the Small Business Podcast to discuss the distributed future of work, the benefits of open banking and the Xero platform, more opportunities to increase diversity and how it benefits the business and much more.

Events and Submission Deadlines

• July 14: Finext Conference USA
• July 27: Deadline to submit comments to Canada’s OSFI on its 10 Consultation on Third-Party Risk Management
• August 15–17: VenCent Fintech Summit
• August 23–25: Fintech DevCon 2022
• August 24-25: XeroCon New Orleans
• September 12-14: FinovateFall Conference
• September 12-14: Lend360 Summit
• September 21: Fintech Talents Embedded Finance North America Virtual Event
• September 20-22: MX Money Experience Summit