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FDATA North America August 2022 Newsletter

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

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FDATA North America Responds to Banking Trade Associations’ Petition Urging CFPB Supervision of Data Recipients

Contact: Kerrie Rushton, (202) 365-6338, [email protected] 

August 2, 2022, Washington, DC -In response to the recent petition from several banking trade associations urging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to supervise both data aggregators and data recipients, FDATA is releasing the following statement:

“FDATA and its members have long advocated for the CFPB to supervise data aggregators as part of its 1033 rulemaking. The joint trades petition, however, calls for the Bureau to supervise aggregators and data recipients. This would require the Bureau to supervise thousands of additional entities — including scores of community banks and credit unions that are today acting as data recipients but are currently exempt from CFPB supervision.

FDATA continues to believe that the most appropriate path for the Bureau to oversee the consumer-permissioned data spec is to supervise aggregators and to promulgate third-party guidance laying out the CFPB’s expectations for the aggregators’ clients: the data recipients.”

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Video 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: 

https://youtu.be/QBAfTVx7Gv8
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FDATA North America July 2022 Newsletter

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

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FDATA North America Submits Comments to Canada’s OSFI on Draft Guideline B-10: Third Party Risk Management

Contact: Kerrie Rushton, (202) 365-6338, [email protected] 

June 29, 2022, Washington, DC -The Financial Data and Technology Association of North America today submitted comments in response to Canada’s Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions’ (OSFI) public consultation on Draft Guideline B-10: Third Party Risk Management.

The comment letter focused on the interplay between this draft 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 stressed that since it is OSFI’s mandate to keep FRFIs and, by extension, Canada’s financial system, safe, sound, and secure, it is critical to distinguish third-party providers who directly work with Federally Regulated Financial Institutions (FRFIs), from providers serving consumers whose only relationship with a FRFI is accessing data about that consumer to provide the customer with the benefit of their product or service. For example, an FRFI may have a relationship with the data aggregator who is performing the function of data portability on behalf of that customer, but it most likely does not have a relationship with that budgeting application, and therefore could not reasonably oversee or be responsible for its operations. 

The letter also expressed appreciation for OSFI’s clarification provided by a footnote at the end of the consultation, which recognizes that this draft guideline is not intended to impede the establishment of open banking, but stressed that this footnote alone does not satisfactorily address the need to ensure coordination of accreditation for open banking providers. We therefore suggested to OSFI that the most appropriate amendment to address this critically important issue would be to make unambiguously clear that accredited open banking providers under Canada’s open banking system are exempt from OSFI’s third-party risk management framework.

We also urged OSFI to create a specific carveout from B-10 for all accredited open banking providers under Canada’s open banking framework as part of this consultation, and before the new open banking system is implemented. 

A copy of the letter is available here: FDATA NA Submission to OSFI on Draft Guidance B.10

ABOUT FDATA NORTH AMERICA
FDATA North America was founded in early 2018. Its members collectively provide tens of millions of consumers in Canada, the United States and Mexico with aggregation-based tools to better manage their finances.

Members include air (Alliance for Innovative Regulation), APImetrics, Basis Theory, Betterment, BillGO, Codat, Direct ID, Envestnet Yodlee, EQ Bank, Experian, finansystech, Fiserv, Flinks, Hank Payments, Interac, Intuit, Inverite, Kabbage, Mogo, Morningstsar, M Science, MX, Petal, Plaid, Questrade, RocketMortgage, SaltEdge, Trustly, ValidiFI, Vaultree, VoPay, Wealthica, Xero, and others.

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FDATA North America June 2022 Newsletter

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 and Paytechs of Canada Brief Canadian Members of Parliament on Results of Open Banking Survey. The two organizations presented the novel findings of a recent survey to elected members of the Canadian Parliament from all three major parties as a way to build momentum toward delivery of Canada’s Open Banking system. The survey, conducted by Pollara Insights, found that more than half of respondents felt stress when interacting with Canada’s financial services sector and believe they would benefit from increased competition and transparency, with women, young people, and new Canadians finding the existing system particularly difficult. The briefing event was co-sponsored by MPs Colin Deacon, Dan Albas, Daniel Blaikie, Julie Dzerowicz and Gabriel Ste-Marie, and served as an opportunity to discuss how a made-in-Canada model for open banking and the modernization of payments can drive inclusion, innovation, establish responsible oversight and better meet the needs of consumers.

FDATA Develops Draft Open Banking Privacy Principles. FDATA North America’s Privacy Working Group, a joint effort between representatives across FDATA’s 30+ membership, has developed a draft set of privacy principles to guide the implementation of open banking in the US 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. As policymakers in the U.S. 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’s Colin Luce published a blog entitled: Why Data Security is a Developer Service Problem, which explains why securing, suing, and managing sensitive data is so difficult, and how Basis Theory’s offerings can simplify this complex management.

Betterment CEO Sarah Levy joined Fintech Explained for a wide-ranging Q&A on Betterment’s mission of opening up investment opportunities for all and the future of the financial technology industry.

BillGO published a new blog post explaining how modern bill pay technology can help reduce the so-called “junk fees” that the CFPB recently announced it is looking into, by providing consumers with the tools they need to help them stay current on their financial obligations. The blog includes a quote by CEO Dan Holt from BillGO’s new eBook: “when you consider consumer anxieties around credit scores and late fees, it’s clear that offering real-time payment tools is imperative if FIs hope to [meet] consumer needs.“

Codat published a blog post entitled “Bank feeds and accounting integrations: Why corporate card users need both to automate bookkeeping” which explains how data from bank feeds and reconciliation can help SMBs simplify expense management and automate their bookkeeping.

DirectID was nominated as finalist in the 2022 Open Banking Expo Awards for the Best Use of Open Banking by a Non-Financial Services Company.

Envestnet Yodlee published a case study of how its client 1Bill authenticated and streamlined its bill management and easily got its consumers to link their bank accounts using Envestnet Yodlee’s data aggregation platform.

Flinks has been selected as a finalist for the 2022 Open Banking Expo Awards Best Open Banking Partnership—consumer category.

Fiserv President of Digital Payments and Data Aggregation Matthew Wilcox joined Jim Marous in the Financial Brand podcast to discuss how and if traditional banks can keep up with the rapid transformation of the payments system.

Interac sponsored “The Future of Money” event hosted by The Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto, which featured Chief Commercial Officer William Keliehor and Chief Innovation Labs & New Ventures Officer, Debbie Gamble who spoke about open banking and digital currencies.

Kabbage co-founder Kathryn Petralia joined Tearsheet in a conversation about the unique financial needs of small businesses and what banks can do to address them. She explained how the Kabbage platform was built around automation and connection to customer-permissioned third-party data sources in order to help customers understand how their businesses are performing.

MX’s Jane Barratt joined an episode of “Banking Transformed” with Jim Marous to share how data and insight can transform banking into emotional relationships that can impact people, organizations, and communities. Jane also penned an op-ed in American Banker advocating for an open banking system in the US and explaining that “data permissioning brings choice….choice for the customer to make informed decisions based on data they are choosing to share between their financial institutions and preferred fintechs.”

Plaid’s John Pitts participated in an industry panel hosted by Economist Impact Events entitled “Bank or pay: digital competition in the financial ecosystem” discussing what factors should be considered when banks buy or collaborate with fintechs.

Salt Edge announced the launch of an exclusive report: “Top 5 use cases for B2B companies powered by open banking” which identified and highlighted 5 major business sectors that have embraced open banking technology to improve their offerings, and  analyzed the traditional issues for every use case and how open banking can help to overcome them.

Vopay, a leading provider of integrated payment technology announced a strategic partnership with TurnKey Lender to deliver an AI-powered lending automation platform used by traditional, alternative, and embedded lenders in 50+ countries. This integration with VoPay will allow for quick and efficient automated loan disbursements and installment collections, expanding the capabilities of lenders to meet customer payment preferences.

Xero announced two new partnerships: a new integration with Paystack which allows its users to add a “Pay with Paystack” button to Xero invoices, and with Stripe, a leading financial infrastructure platform, to create a seamless, integrated experience through the Xero Stripe App, which allows small businesses who are using Stripe with Xero to easily compare records, data and information.

Monthly FDATA Member Spotlight: Morningstar ByAllAccounts

This month’s FDATA Member Spotlight features Katy Gibson, Head of Product for Morningstar ByAllAccounts, who explains how access to customer-permissioned data is critical for their customers in the investment and wealth-management sectors.

Events and Submission Deadlines

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Video Member Spotlight: Xero

FDATA North America member Xero is a cloud-based accounting software platform for small businesses with more than 3 million subscribers globally. This Member Spotlight interview features Faye Pang, Xero’s Country Manager for Canada.

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FDATA North America May 2022 Newsletter

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 Responds to CFPB Request for Information (RFI) on ‘Junk Fees’. FDATA used this opportunity to once again urge the CFPB to prioritize an open banking rulemaking under Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act, an action which would create a long-overdue consumer financial data right in the United States. The letter states that FDATA believes the most practical remedy to reducing predatory fees in the financial ecosystem is to implement an open finance regime in the United States, stressing that “the center of such a framework must be an unambiguous and legally binding customer financial data right, which would ensure that consumers and small businesses could easily shop for financial services and products among scores of potential providers in an open, transparent marketplace.” Click here to read FDATA’s full submission.

FDATA and Paytechs of Canada Release Landmark Survey on Canadian Consumer and Small Business Attitudes Toward Financial Sector, Fintech and Open Banking. This groundbreaking poll found that more than half of Canadians reported feeling stress when interacting with Canada’s financial services sector and believe they would benefit from increased competition and transparency in the financial services market. The findings are derived from two surveys conducted by Pollara Strategic Insights of 2000 randomly-selected Canadian adults and 600 small business owners. The full report is available here.

Member News & Activity

Basis Theory has rolled out its new privacy tool called sendsecure.ly, which ensures passwords, API credentials, card numbers, etc. don’t exist in perpetuity within friends’, families, and coworkers’ emails, SMS messengers, or chat apps. Instead, the web app allows anyone to share their sensitive data as a single-use undecipherable link that can be privately shared with anyone else. Sendsecure.ly is a Next.js application written using TypeScript and built upon the Basis Theory platform. All interactions with the Basis Theory API are performed using the JavaScript SDK, and executed within the Next.js backend API.

Codat published a blog post explaining in detail how open banking can allow for the integration of banking and accounting data to empower better credit access for small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) who may otherwise face difficultly getting loan applications approved. The blog also covers what banking and accounting data have to offer on their own, how they can work together to paint a fuller, more accurate picture of SMB finances, and how the best APIs on the market enable modern lenders to access and analyze both seamlessly.

Envestnet Yodlee put together an on-demand webinar featuring Head of International Markets Jason O’Shaughnessy, exploring how open banking and open finance provide timely, secure, and direct access to banking, investment accounts, and pension data.

Flinks published a blog post clearly laying out the basics of open banking, describing several key reasons it should be adopted, listing dominant use cases, and digging deeper into the current state of open banking in North America.

Fiserv announced a new partnership with Equifax to collaborate on new offerings that deliver a more holistic picture of businesses and their data and enable financial institutions and businesses of all sizes to embrace the power of real-time data insights. “Equifax and Fiserv have a shared vision for how timely, detailed data can transform the financial services ecosystem, helping to better inform decision makers with the right knowledge at the right time,” said Frank Bisignano, Fiserv President and Chief Executive Officer. “Together we will empower financial institutions and businesses to operate in new ways as they benefit from data-enabled insights.”

Interac President and CEO Mark O’Connell delivered a virtual keynote address at the Empire Club entitled “Canada’s Digital Economy: Creating a Shared Vision in a Fragmented Word”, explaining how Canadian businesses and governments can build trust and meet the needs of the digital economy.

Morningstar’s ByAllAccounts was recently featured on the WealthTech Today podcast. Hear from Don McHenry, Senior Product Manager at Morningstar ByAllAccounts, as he covers trends in data aggregation. Topics covered include how data aggregation powers open banking, how data is enriched to support specific client use cases, some tips on selecting a data aggregation vendor, and much more.

MX Interim President and CEO Shane Evans published a blog post sharing why MX sees open finance as the ‘great amplifier’ to achieving its mission. Shane sees a world where we talk about our financial challenges and find solutions to help everyone in society to become financially strong. Be sure to watch the full replay of Shane’s keynote from MX FinTech Festival and watch for other session recaps on the MX blog.

Plaid will be hosting the world’s leading developers, innovators, and business leaders on May 19 for Plaid Forum, an immersive, one-day hybrid experience designed to empower and build the future of digital finance. Featuring keynotes, interactive workshops, and specialized learning tracks, this event will be online and in-person in San Francisco, and free for everyone.

Salt Edge celebrated its 9th birthday on April 19th and was featured in a blog post at Innovate Finance entitled “9 Facts about Salt Edge on its 9th year anniversary.” They also announced a new strategic partnership with FintechOS to offer financial institutions, banks, and electronic money institutions (EMIs) already using FintechOS’ high productivity fintech infrastructure (HPFI) the ability to improve their compliance with PSD2, as well as other global Open Banking standards.

Trustly was awarded the 2022 Banking Fintech of the Year award for Retail Payments by Aite-Novarica. In collaboration with the Merchant Advisory Group, Trustly published new research around how Open Banking Payments can help merchants mitigate their payment challenges deriving from COVID-19. The company also published a blog post about the powerful combination of Open Banking and Online Gaming.

Vopay published a blog post explaining Variable Recurring Payments and how its development will follow once open banking arrives in Canada.

Monthly FDATA Member Spotlight: Xero

FDATA North America member Xero is a cloud-based accounting software platform for small businesses with more than 3 million subscribers globally. This Member Spotlight interview features Faye Pang, Xero’s Country Manager for Canada.

Events and Submission Deadlines

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FDATA North America Responds to CFPB Request for Information (RFI) on ‘Junk Fees’

Contact: Kerrie Rushton, (202) 365-6338, [email protected] 

April 8, 2022, Washington, DC – The Financial Data and Technology Association (FDATA) of North America submitted a comment letter today to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in response to its Request for Information (“RFI”) regarding fees assessed by financial services companies. FDATA used this opportunity to once again urge the CFPB to finalize a regulation under Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act, an action which would create a long-overdue consumer data right in the United States. 

The letter states that FDATA believes the most practical remedy to reducing predatory fees in the financial ecosystem is to implement an open finance regime in the United States, stressing that “the center of such a framework must be an unambiguous and legally binding customer financial data right, which would ensure that consumers and small businesses could easily shop for financial services and products among scores of potential providers in an open, transparent marketplace.”

The lack of a customer financial data right in the United States reduces competition in data-driven financial services, artificially stifles consumer choice and creates an environment in which fees charged to end users may stay stagnant – or even increase – over time. To tackle these thorny challenges, FDATA North America once again encouraged the CFPB to utilize the authority vested in it under Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act to promulgate, by rule, a customer financial data right that will “spur greater financial services innovation and competition, lower fees, and improve financial access and inclusion.” 

To further demonstrate how a consumer data right could help address the issues raised in the RFI, the letter makes note of CFPB Director Rohit Chopra’s remarks during a press call regarding overdraft fees in December of last year, where he astutely noted that “If America can shift to an open banking infrastructure, it will be harder for banks to trap customers into an account for the purpose of fee harvesting.” 

The letter also shared information on the successful implementation of open finance regimes in other countries which demonstrate the wide-ranging economic and consumer benefits that can be delivered by a final 1033 rule. A copy of the letter is here: FDATA CFPB Junk Fee RFI Letter April 2022

ABOUT FDATA NORTH AMERICA
FDATA was heavily involved in the UK Open Banking Working Group in 2015. In 2016, the working group’s output was published by Her Majesty’s Treasury as the Open Banking Standard. FDATA North America was founded in early 2018. Its members collectively provide tens of millions of consumers in Canada, the United States and Mexico with aggregation-based tools to better manage their finances.

Members include air (Alliance for Innovative Regulation), APImetrics, Basis Theory, Betterment, BillGO, Codat, Direct ID, Envestnet Yodlee, EQ Bank, Experian, finansystech, Fiserv, Flinks, Hank Payments, Interac, Intuit, Inverite, Kabbage, Mogo, Morningstsar, M Science, MX, Petal, Plaid, Questrade, RocketMortgage, SaltEdge, Trustly, ValidiFI, Vaultree, VoPay, Wealthica, Xero, and others.

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