Fintech Meetup 2026: Navigating the Friction and Future of Open Banking
- John San Filippo
- 24 hours ago
- 5 min read
By John San Filippo
At Fintech Meetup in March in Las Vegas, Finopotamus attended a high-stakes panel discussion titled “The New Rules of Data Sharing: How Should Fintechs Navigate Open Banking Today?” The session featured a deep bench of industry veterans including moderator Ryan Christiansen, executive director of the Salt Lake City, Utah-based University of Utah Fintech Center; John Pitts, vice president of government relations for San Francisco-based Affirm; Rajeev Shrivastava, CEO of New York City-based Telegraph; Danielle Aviles Krueger, head of policy for San Francisco-based Plaid; and Steve Boms, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based Financial Data and Technology Association – North America (FData). Following the panel discussion, Finopotamus sat down for an exclusive interview with Boms to further explore the strategic implications of the current regulatory stalemate in the United States.
Here are his expert insights from both sessions:
The Global Race for Data Sovereignty
While the United States was once at the forefront of the data-sharing conversation, Boms observed that the nation has transitioned from a leader to a follower. When the formal process for open banking began in the U.S. around 2015, he explained that only the United Kingdom had made significant strides. Since that time, the rest of the world has surged ahead with more comprehensive frameworks.
Boms pointed to the “Consumer Data Right” in Australia, which encompasses all consumer data, not just banking information. He also noted that the Parliament in Canada recently signed an open banking regime into law that includes “write access”—the ability to initiate actions, not just read data—which is broader than most current U.S. proposals. “The U.S. was essentially number two in the world for a brief period, but while we were waiting for the regulatory landscape to take off, many other countries passed us by,” Boms stated.
Infrastructure as “Invisible Electricity”
One of the core challenges in the open banking debate is that the subject matter itself is not traditionally high-profile for the average consumer. Boms argued that open banking should be viewed through the lens of infrastructure rather than a standalone product. He compared the movement of financial data to the electrical grid.
“The overwhelming majority of us never think about it. We think about the thing that we plug into the socket,” Boms explained. He noted that consumers only care that their devices – or in this case, their financial apps – work reliably when connected. For this to occur, Boms emphasized the need for standardized technology so that a single set of protocols can serve everything from a printer to a refrigerator, or a checking account to a wealth management tool.
Manufactured Complexity and the Lawyer’s Toll
A recurring theme throughout the discussions was the idea that open banking is often made to appear more difficult than it is. Boms highlighted a personal experience to illustrate how “manufactured complexity” serves as a retention strategy for incumbent institutions. Despite being a sophisticated industry professional with 20 years of experience, he recounted that it took him more than two months to fully transition his own checking account last year.
“I’ve got all these subscriptions, I’ve got direct deposits, and I forgot about this thing that gets charged once a year,” Boms said. He argued that in a true open banking world, this process should be reduced to the click of a button that notifies all direct debits and transitions all information automatically.
Furthermore, Boms challenged the high-cost legal arguments often used to slow progress. He noted that much of the concern surrounding liability and artificial intelligence (AI) “agents” could be solved by applying existing law. “If only we had an area of law on agency that had been developed over 500 years of common-law practice to tell us exactly what an agent means in terms of liability,” he remarked during the panel. He suggested that many bank lawyers are incentivized to claim the issue is unprecedented to justify additional billable hours, when the task is simply “translating this from ‘meatspace’ to cyberspace.”
The Economic Trap for Small Financial Institutions
A significant portion of the debate during the panel discussion centered on data monetization. While some argue that financial institutions should be allowed to charge fees for data access, Boms warned that this model would likely harm smaller institutions, including many credit unions.
He explained that for a credit union, the percentage of data “coming in”—where members connect external accounts to the credit union’s app—pales in comparison to the volume of data “going out.” Consequently, in a fee-based system, the credit union would end up paying more in data tolls than it would ever collect from third parties. Boms estimated that such a system really only benefits the largest 15 to 30 institutions that control roughly 80% of the market volume.
Structural Barriers: Federalism and Sectoral Silos
Boms addressed why the U.S. has not yet adopted a comprehensive data framework similar to Australia’s Consumer Data Right. He pointed to two primary structural hurdles. First is the concept of federalism; the U.S. federal government generally only has jurisdiction over interstate commerce, which limits its ability to regulate all types of data at once.
Second, the U.S. utilizes a “sectoral system” of government where different industries have their own regulatory silos. Financial services, healthcare, and social media all operate under different authorities. To create a unified consumer data right would require breaking down these long-standing silos, which Boms acknowledged would be “really difficult,” despite his philosophical alignment with the idea.
The Threat to Agentic AI and Competition
Looking toward the future, Boms warned that the industry must look to where the technology is going, specifically toward agentic AI models that act on a consumer’s behalf. He expressed concern that if incumbent banks are allowed to pick winners and losers by charging more for “high-value” data elements like payment data, they could stifle competition.
“The thing that would keep me up at night if I was a banker was the part of the pie chart that pay-by-bank takes away from my revenue,” Boms noted, referring to the interchange fees that financial institutions (FIs) collect on traditional credit and debit rails. If FIs can charge more for the data calls required for pay-by-bank use cases, they can effectively make those competing services less viable.
Security and the “Wild West” Myth
Finally, Boms pushed back against the narrative that fintechs and data aggregators operate without oversight. He noted that third parties are already regulated under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), the same 30-year-old statute that regulates bank data privacy. These laws already require firms to encrypt data at rest and in transit, maintain written information security programs, and follow the principle of “least privilege.”
Boms clarified that while the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finalized 2024 rule sought to codify a consumer’s legal right to share data without fees, that rule is currently in a state of uncertainty following a lawsuit by the Bank Policy Institute. For now, the market remains in an ambiguous environment, waiting for a clear signal from regulators that would prioritize consumer data ownership over institutional data hoarding.
“My priority would be to have a legally binding consumer data right,” Boms concluded, “that would say, this is your data, it’s yours, you cannot be charged a fee to share it.”