The original model had been based on recommending the right financial products at the right time to customers, saving them time and money when they were shopping around for the best deal, but getting access to customer data early had proved difficult.
Getting other businesses to take their technology was never going to be easy. In 2017 Open Banking was still unproven at scale and no-one wanted to be the first to take the plunge. Banks move slowly in tech and the first Open Banking APIs had a lot of technical problems, so the challenges were all about iterating through small scale proofs of concept and helping banks and the Open Banking Implementation Entity to get the APIs into a good state.
Open Banking took effect in January 2018, compelling all U.K.-regulated banks to allow customers to share their financial data with authorized providers or other banks, with the customer’s permission. The global Open Banking market generated $7.29 billion in 2018, and is expected to reach $43.15 billion by 2026.
“The way people earn and spend money is changing really fast and we’ve seen exponential growth in socio-economic factors like the gig economy,” says Maslaveckas. “This leaves people who have this new relationship with money at a huge disadvantage because the system isn’t set up to give them a fair assessment. Open Banking is having and will continue to have a huge effect on that.”