Open banking is (probably) coming to Canada but you’ll have to be patient

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

In a previous article published in May, I elaborated on the lack of open banking legislation in Canada. Based on an announcement from the federal government earlier this month, this given situation could change… but the wait is far from over.

A long-awaited announcement

In 2018, the Government of Canada set up a committee to determine the merits of such a framework for the Canadian economy. On August 4th, the final report was finally made available to the public.

In earlier documents, committee members made clear they were no fan of screen scraping (a commonly used method for gathering data from multiple accounts for a single user) and that Canadian fintech firms should rethink this approach.

Three pillars

In the final report, the suggested implementation of an open banking framework is based on those 3 principles:

1. Industry participants should follow common rules “to ensure consumers are protected and liability rests with the party at fault”.
2. An accreditation framework and process enable “third party service providers to enter an open banking system”.
3. Technical specifications allow “for safe and efficient data…