The time for unhappy compromise is over. What if the federal government showed some courage and decisively picked a side?
LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) director Rohit Chopra lobbed a surprise grenade onto the expo floor at Money 20/20 Tuesday morning by announcing plans for an open banking “doorman authority” rule.
Abraham Tachjian is the man Ottawa has hired to develop an open banking system that is expected to roll out in 2023. As the clock ticks, industry players give him an ear on how to get the job done; Canada’s open banking czar is feeling the heat.
US-based Open Banking operator 
Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
Category Archives: Digital, NEO, Open Banking, Open Finance
Opinion: Time for the Government to Decide – ‘Who Decides What for Whom’?
The Mox | Alex Vronces | Oct 25, 2022
The time for unhappy compromise is over. What if the federal government showed some courage and decisively picked a side?
- As Canada tiptoes to open banking, the question that belies the saying—who decides what for whom?—is looming over the federal government. Canada’s open banking lead, Abraham Tachjian, is mostly working with banks and fintech companies to develop a rulebook that would dictate how Canadians can port their financial information from their banks to other organizations of their choosing.
- Industry stakeholders are fighting over the pen to write Canada’s rulebook. But who takes over the rulebook, and decides what for whom, when the rulebook is finally written?
See: NCFA Open Banking Governance with Senator Colin Deacon and Mahi Sall
- When the federal government started consulting on open banking a few years ago, it stood up an advisory committee that produced a final report last year. The final report has dozens of recommendations, a few of which are about governance. Ultimately, the advisory committee sees a role for a “fit-for-purpose” entity, established by the federal government, that would “manage the on-going administration of the [open banking] system” once Tachjian’s work is done.
Big banks want the government to do less.
- That government is best which governs least. And how can you blame them for believing it?
- As they should, Canada’s big banks like to remind us how great they are. The Canadian Bankers Association wrote to the government that “Canada has a long history as a global leader in developing industry solutions to help meet broad public policy objectives, through highly consultative and collaborative relationships between financial institutions and regulators.”
Many of Canada’s fintech companies think the government needs to be more involved.
- That government is best which governs best.
- The status quo—the government which has governed least—has neither supported fintech companies nor the Canadians who want their services. Sometimes, big banks prevent fintech companies from accessing the financial information of their customers, even though their customers want the fintech companies to have it. This keeps Canadians away from the financial services they chose. It also doesn’t give Canadians a secure and efficient way to share financial information. The only way is for Canadians to give fintech companies permission to do what’s called screen scraping.
So what do Canada’s facts and circumstances call for?
I can’t help but recall a letter from David Skok, the Logic’s CEO and editor-in-chief:
“There are major institutional players—including Canada’s big banks, insurance and credit-card companies—seeking to maintain their market share, and there are startups and credit unions—some even propped up by the big players—looking to steal market share. At some point, the country needs to define what kind of innovation it wants to support: will it be incumbents trying to transform their businesses, or will it be the little guys seeking to disrupt them? Trying to please everyone pleases no one.”
Continue to the full article --> here
NCFA Canada's Open Banking Journey Series:
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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CFPB: US Consumer Agency Announces Open Banking Rule
Fintech Nexus | | Oct 25, 2022
LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) director Rohit Chopra lobbed a surprise grenade onto the expo floor at Money 20/20 Tuesday morning by announcing plans for an open banking “doorman authority” rule.
Read: Rohit Chopra's speech for this announcement at money 20/20
- Ruling Initiative: “The CFPB will launch the process to activate a doorman authority under Section 1033 of the Consumer Financial Protection Act. The provisions provide for personal financial data rights for Americans but will only have teeth after the CFPB defines the specific store rules.
- While not explicitly open banking or open financial, the rule will move us closer by obligating financial institutions to share consumer data upon consumer requests, empowering people to break up with banks that provide that service and unleashing more market competition.”
- If successful, it will also reduce the ability for incumbents to build moats and for middlemen to serve as gatekeepers, providing big advantages to those who provide the best products, service quality, and rates, Chopra added.
- Chopra:
- The problem: The broader overall regime is broken because consumer access is based on a set of unstable and inconsistent norms across market participants. We have a number of highly concentrated sub-markets, credit reporting conglomerates, card networks, core processors, and more. It is absolutely critical that no one owns any critical infrastructure.
See: NCFA Open Banking Current State in Canada with Senator Colin Deacon and Mahi Sall
- Open Banking: Now, suppose a firm is required to make a person’s financial data available to them or to a third party acting on that consumer’s behalf through a secure method. In that case, we’ll be able to mitigate some of the problems that exist today. We expect to propose requiring financial institutions offering deposit accounts, credit cards, digital wallets, prepaid cards, and other transaction accounts to set up secure methods, like APIs for data sharing"
- Competition: “A competitive market would also lead to unbundling, where companies compete on individual products rather than relying on captive customers or cross-selling scams.”
- Expects deeper scrutiny of conglomerate security measures and protections.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Germany Challenger Bank, N26, Enables Crypto Trading with BitPanda Integration
TechCrunch | Romain Dillet | Oct 20, 2022
Image: N26
Challenger bank N26 is launching a new trading feature in its app — N26 Crypto. Users will be able to easily trade crypto assets using money in their N26 account. Behind the scenes, N26 is partnering with Bitpanda to handle trading and custody.
- N26 is going to slowly roll out N26 Crypto across Europe. At first, only some users in Austria will be able to access the new feature. Other countries should get the feature at some point over the next six months.
- Crypto trading: N26 will let you buy, sell and hold 100 different crypto assets. The startup plans to add another 94 crypto assets later down the road. And I’m sure the company will expand to stocks and other asset classes soon.
- N26 plans to charge 1.5% for bitcoin trades and 2.5% for all other cryptocurrencies. That’s the same fee that users pay in Bitpanda’s own app.
- Users who pay €16.90 per month for N26 Metal will pay 1% and 2% in transaction fees on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies respectively.
See: N26 addresses neobank’s culture struggles
- The main advantage with N26 Crypto is that it is directly tied with your existing bank account. You don’t have to upload money to a different trading account, switch to the Bitpanda app (or another app) and then start trading.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Opinion: Canada’s Open Banking Governance Challenge
Canada Today | Claire Clarkson | Oct 21, 2022
Abraham Tachjian is the man Ottawa has hired to develop an open banking system that is expected to roll out in 2023. As the clock ticks, industry players give him an ear on how to get the job done; Canada’s open banking czar is feeling the heat.
- Open banking is a system that would allow consumers and small businesses to securely exchange their financial data between financial service providers such as banks and accredited fintechs. Also known as consumer-centric finance, it heralds the promise of giving Canadians more control over their finances while making it easier for them to switch lenders, open accounts and use new digital tools to manage their money.
- Governance a priority: Banks, credit unions and fintechs often have conflicting ideas about how to achieve these goals. But interestingly, there’s one issue they all seem to agree on these days: Tachjian-san needs to re-order his to-do list and bring governance to the top. Governance is about ensuring accountability and public trust in the coming open banking system.
- Mr. Tachjian’s governance challenge is to create an organization that oversees, implements and governs open banking across the country. Importantly, this entity is independent and accountable to the Canadian government and must provide consumers and small businesses with recourse should anything go wrong.
- Establishing a governance framework is usually the first step in creating a new organization or system. But this is Canada, folks. Our country is characterized by doing things in the wrong order and making short work of good governance. (Just look at how flawed governance caused the current crisis at Hockey Canada.)
Watch Video: NCFA Open Banking Governance with Senator Colin Deacon and Mahi Sall
Abraham Tachijian, Canada's Open Banking Lead
While policy work on the future of the system’s ongoing management and governance has been ongoing internally throughout this process, we have reached a point where we will shift our focus. Once we have addressed these key issues, we will liaise again with the working groups and convene additional steering group meetings as needed.
- Governance model in isolation from the four working committees: But it’s still problematic that some secret group of people in some backroom hatched the governance for open banking. This lack of transparency is worrying. Certainly, governance is a complex issue given the “diverging interests” of the various industry participants in an open banking system. But it was a mistake to continue working on the governance model in isolation from the four working groups. The governance model should have been established from the start to inform their work.
Governance should never be reverse engineered. Mr. Tachjian and the Ministry of Finance urgently need to bring this discussion to the fore. Otherwise, Canada risks putting the cart before the horse for open banking.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Plaid’s Annual ‘Fintech Effect’ Report Shows 84% of UK Consumers Use Fintechs to Manage Money
The Paypers | Oct 18, 2022
US-based Open Banking operator Plaid has published The Fintech Effect report that shows 84% of UK consumers use fintech for money management in 2022.
- When it comes to the benefits of fintech as reported by consumers:
- 41% has stated that they are enabled to have a greater understanding of their spending, thus being able to have better money management.
- More than half (56%) reported that fintech helps them save time
- 49% stated that it helps them have increased control over their finances.
See: CB Insights: Canadian Fintech Funding Dropped 70 Percent in Q2-2022 YoY
- Consumers’ financial stress is on the rise:
- 62% of consumers having stated that this has increased since 2021
- 83% citing the rising cost of living as being their main concern.
- The economic backdrop, with interest rates rising and inflation
- a worrisome 41% of consumers have reported they have little to no confidence in the economy.
- 62% of consumers having stated that this has increased since 2021
- Enhancing consumers’ financial well-being
- 74% have stated that they need their bank to be able to connect to the apps and services they want to use
- 48% have expressed a wish for seeing their bank partner up with more fintech companies.
- Open Finance is seen as being the next step when it comes to UK consumers’ understanding and managing of their holistic financial life, due to its enhanced connection of financial data that includes pensions, savings, and investments.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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NCFA Open Banking Governance with Senator Colin Deacon and Mahi Sall
About NCFA Canada | Oct 24, 2022
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association of Canada (NCFA), true to its mission of providing education, industry stewardship, networking, growth, and funding opportunities for innovative financial technologies and related sectors, is pleased to launch a brand new thought leadership series on Open Banking led by Berlin-based NCFA ambassador and independent expert in Fintech-Bank Partnerships Mahi Sall.
The series is called ‘Canada’s Open Banking Journey’ and aims to aggregate international and domestic perspectives of Open Banking/Finance expert practitioners from around the globe to advance dialogues, key considerations, and explore potential solutions for the development of a made in Canada open banking regime with the following timeline:
- Sep 2018: Canada’s Open Banking journey officially began when the government established a multi-stakeholder Advisory Committee tasked to conduct a review into the merits of Open Banking
- Apr 2021: Advisory committee publishes final recommendations
- Mar 2022: Government appoints Abraham Tachjian – PwC Canada as Canada’s Open Banking lead responsible for convening industry, government and consumers in designing the foundation of the system of Open Banking for a launch in 2023.
- Oct 2023: Phase 1 implementation expected
Speakers:
Senator Colin Deacon, Senate of Canada
Mahi Sall, NCFA Ambassador, Open Banking
Themes:
0. Introduction
1. Championing Open Banking
2. Current State in Canada
3. Governance *THIS VIDEO *
4. Success
5. Implementation Risks
6. Future Outlook
NCFA Open Finance, Open Banking and Beyond Banking interviews:
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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McKinsey: Embedded Finance – Who Will Capture the Value? Risk vs Reward
McKinsey & Co | Andy Dresner, Albion Murati, Brian Pike, and Jonathan Zell | Oct 13, 2022
New Small businesses may never interact with a conventional bank to open a deposit account, order a debit card, and meet most of their financing needs.
- The operators of these platforms are not usually banks. Rather, they are software companies that partner with banks and technology providers to embed financial products into a single seamless, convenient, and easy-to-use customer experience.
See: Bain & Co Embedded Finance Report: What It Takes to Prosper in the New Value Chain
- This new form of partnership between banks, technology providers, and distributors of financial products via nonfinancial platforms underpins what has been hailed as the embedded-finance revolution.
- Sitting at the intersection of commerce, banking, and business services, payments has been one of the first use cases of embedded finance, and a large number of the aspiring embedded-finance providers originate from the payments industry.
- embedded finance reached $20 billion in revenues in the United States alone in 2021, according to McKinsey’s market-sizing model. According to our estimates, the market could double in size within the next three to five years.
- Digitalization: The digitization of commerce and business management has massively expanded opportunities to embed finance in nonfinancial customer experiences.
- As much as 33 percent of global card spending—50 percent in the US—now takes place online, with a large portion of small and midsize companies in the US relying on software solutions for managing their business
- Time has come: As digital natives came of age, they expanded the pool of consumers and businesses open to receiving all their financial services via digital platforms.
- Open-banking innovation, supported by mandates in the European Union and market-led adoption in the US, has helped unlock latent demand by enabling third-party fintech players to access consumers’ banking data and even conduct transactions on their behalf.
- For a nonbank company acting as a distributor, embedded finance offers a way to enhance the customer experience and create a new source of revenue without incurring the overhead associated with operating a bank.
See: McKinsey Global Banking: Revenue pools moving to customer-ownership with embedded digital financial services
- Risks: likely to remain a constraint on growth, however, as products that require case-by-case assessment, in-person touchpoints, or regulatory waiting periods, such as commercial real estate financing, are less susceptible to end-to-end digitization. Despite these constraints, we estimate that products suitable for offering via embedded finance could account for as much as 50 percent of banking revenue pools
- Adapt to B2B2C and B2B2B sales motions. Although some financial institutions operate with channel partners, many are accustomed to serving end customers directly. Those using direct channels will need to build a new set of capabilities to support distributors in selling embedded-finance products to their consumer or business customers.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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