Mr. Open Banking

When it comes to open banking globally, there are several factors that have acted as drivers for the movement, like competition, inclusion, stability and innovation. Although innovation takes a back seat in some regions, there is one place where it is firmly front-and-center: the Middle East. The Middle East and North Africa, a region known by the acronym MENA, has embarked on its own open banking...

Open banking definitions often differ from region to region. In the U.S., where open banking is decidedly market-driven, it is associated more with consent-driven data sharing, rather than standardization or regulation. Outside of regulatory constraints, U.S. open banking efforts are laser-focused on generating business value through true innovation. In this episode, Eyal sits down with Jane Barra...

Open banking aims to introduce common, open, shared standards for the secure exchange of financial data. As a result, whether you bank with one bank or five, fintech or credit union, JPMC or PayPal, you can finally see all your accounts together, in one place - a concept known as account aggregation. In this episode, Eyal discusses this concept with Rolands Mesters, the CEO and Co-Founder of Nordi...

Introducing a disruptive movement like open banking into an already developed environment can be difficult. By contrast, introducing innovation where there is nothing to replace, often referred to as a “green field,” makes it possible to adopt the latest technology immediately, leapfrogging whatever came before. Africa, the ultimate green field, has been undergoing a quiet but steady technological...

Despite the doubts of skeptics, the open banking movement is here and it’s evolving quickly. Right now, over 50 regions around the world are in various stages of implementing open banking, while some are already moving into the next stage of the progression: open finance. In this episode, Eyal sits down with Amit Mallick, the Global Open Banking Practice Lead at Accenture, to discuss the threat po...

While most of the financial sector is in the process of implementing open banking, it’s time to look beyond the horizon to see where this evolution is heading. As open banking standards expand to address more and more sectors of the economy, we are moving from open banking to open finance to open data. Open data will enable individuals to grant and share access to every digital transaction, health...

When it comes to both FinTech and open banking, the UK is leading the charge globally. In this episode, Eyal sits down with one of the key figures behind the country’s leadership in financial innovation: Charlotte Crosswell, the newly appointed Chair and Trustee of the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE), which is the organization responsible for bringing open banking to the UK and acting as...

The world of modern cryptocurrencies has evolved beyond just money, with currencies like Ethereum providing programmable open platforms to build the financial instruments of the future. These new tools aim to re-create and radically improve the centuries-old systems we have today, a movement that has come to be known as decentralized finance, or DeFi. As the head economist of Decentralized Protoco...

China has been at the frontier of digital banking innovation since 2014, when their tech giants WeChat and AliPay began driving banks to play catch up with raised user expectations. Creating an entirely different financial ecosystem than what one might experience in North America or even Europe, China’s banking is completely digitally integrated, with cash a long lost piece of the past. In this ep...

There is little doubt that the birthplace of open banking is Europe. As a concept, open banking can be traced to much earlier times, but it was Europe who, in 2015, enacted the first open banking legislation in the form of the PSD2. Fast forward to today, and Europe is reaping the rewards of being the first mover. Thousands of banks and hundreds of fintechs are now leveraging open banking to commu...

The concept of digital disruption is no longer revolutionary for most businesses. In fact, digital transformation has become a prerequisite for ensuring you’re not left behind. Although banking is often perceived as a dated industry, banks are no strangers to digital disruption, dating back to the inception of ATMs. Yet disruption today is catapulting beyond familiar ground. The emergence and expo...

Open banking isn’t just about finance, it’s also about improving society. One of open banking’s key facets is its ability to create non-zero sum outcomes, meaning that one person’s gain doesn’t equal another person’s loss. Globally, we need to consider how best to harness this quality as we move towards a brighter, greener and more equitable future. In this episode, Eyal sits down with Faith Reyno...

Right now, approximately two billion people across the globe are unbanked - meaning they have no connection to any banking system of any kind. Banks simply cannot make their business model work to serve low-income households properly, let alone the poor, which means that even the simplest of transactions such as payments become a challenge, often widening the gap between the haves and have nots. H...

Identity - the simple yet complex concept that makes you, you. But in the digital era, identity encompasses not only the individual attributes you capture about yourself, but those that are only revealed only through your online interactions and behaviours. On the one hand, digital identity is a powerful tool for determining our preferences, helping us make decisions and linking us to our devices,...

At the heart of open banking lies an important and difficult question: do you own your data? As internet giants like Facebook and Google continue to grow, data rights seem like a natural next step in our society. After all, data has surpassed oil in value and yet, most consumers know very little about what their data is actually being used for and how it is being shared. In our final episode of Mr...

In modern banking, new digital challengers are taking on traditional players by providing a better experience for end-customers. Banks need to either keep up or get left behind. On the seventh episode of Mr. Open Banking, Eyal is joined by David Brear to discuss what David calls “The Banking Battlefield.” The two dive into FinTechs' role in challenging major banks to solve consumer problems and th...

While sharing financial data is part of the equation, open banking only really gets interesting when you add the ability to move money around. In the sixth episode of Mr. Open Banking, Eyal is taking us through the world of payments with Nilixa Devlukia, the CEO and Founder of Payments Solved. A lawyer by background, Nilixa is shaking up the payment ecosystem to make it more secure, transparent, a...

Who controls financial data in Canada? How will the ultimate arrival of open banking change that? In our fifth episode of Mr. Open Banking, Eyal comes home to Canada to discuss the challenges and opportunities surrounding the Canadian ecosystem with Senator Colin Deacon. Prior to joining the Canadian Senate in Nova Scotia, Senator Deacon ran several global technology businesses and today is a voca...

What could radical transparency do for our financial ecosystem? How do we create a world that is built on fundamental uncertainty, that adapts to our needs rather than determining them for us?  On our fourth episode of Mr. Open Banking, Eyal is joined by Paolo Sironi, Global Research Leader Banking and Financial Markets, IBM Institute for Business Value  and author of “Financial Market T...

What should come first; customer-centric technologies or regulations? In episode two of Mr. Open Banking, Eyal is chatting with Don Cardinal, the Managing Director of the Financial Data Exchange (FDX). Based out of the United States, Don discusses his perspective on the evolution of open banking, led from a customer-centric perspective and the importance of building collective standards when imple...

On this episode of Mr. Open Banking, Eyal is joined by Gavin Littlejohn, Chairman of FData Global, a not-for-profit that leads negotiations between banks and regulators to develop their open banking initiatives all over the globe. Their conversation spans the importance of data rights, creating standards, and the global landscape of today’s open banking movement. By the end of this episode, you wi...

So, what is open banking and how does it work? In our first episode of Mr. Open Banking, Eyal sits down with Chris Michael, the Founder of Ozone API and the development leader of the open banking implementation entity (OBIE), to discuss the technology behind open banking.  If you’re not a techie, don’t worry, we do our best to explain everything in a simple, easy to understand way. By the end...

The podcast dedicated to open banking, our podcast strives to be one of the key voices in the global open banking community. The goal of the show is to educate people on how the world of finance is being shaken up by open banking, ultimately giving them more ways to save their money, move money around and improve their financial well-being.