Friday, November 4, 2022
Chief among CFPB concerns is the notion that consumers deserve to access and control their financial data, including the right "to walk away from companies offering bad products and poor service and move towards companies competing for their business with alternate or innovative products and services."
CFPB Director Rohit Chopra encouraged payments industry stakeholders to participate in discussions and rulemaking, which he indicated will drive best practices and prevent open banking service providers from hoarding and harvesting data for their own use. "The CFPB's personal financial data rights rulemaking has the potential to jumpstart competition, giving Americans new options for financial products," he said in a statement.
Jodie Kelley, CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association, applauded the CFPB's proposal. "We welcome the CFPB creation of a much-needed policy framework for open banking," she said. "We encourage the Bureau to create a principles-based and comprehensive solution."
Marcilio Oliveira, co-founder and chief of growth at Sensedia, stated the CFPB proposals will help scale U.S. open banking adoption, which he observed is currently behind other regions. "The U.S. market is ripe for innovation and ready to find more secure ways to decentralize innovation," he said.
Noting that data usage permeates the human experience, including banking, the CFPB invited payments industry leaders to join in efforts to protect personal data in a way that stimulates business competition and consumer choice.
"This rulemaking aims to create a marketplace where companies would need to improve their offerings to keep their customers," the CFPB wrote, proposing that in a perfect world, new firms could use consumer-authorized data to compete with large incumbents, and consumers could easily switch providers as needed, all of which would stimulate healthy competition.
Kelley agreed, stating the ETA is dedicated to continuous payments innovation and values the importance of a financial ecosystem whose participants ensure that consumers and businesses are provided with financial products and services that are convenient, secure and reliable.
Oliveira also agreed with the CFPB's belief in consumer and business benefits of an open banking ecosystem. "Moving away from screen scraping to safer, standardized data-sharing practices followed by both the data holder and receiver will better secure personal information," he said. "When consumers have more options to add services or move accounts safely, businesses will step up to earn their business, and everyone wins."
The CFPB noted its outline of proposals is currently under consideration for its data rights rulemaking that, if passed, would require firms to make a consumer's financial information available to them or to a third party at that consumer's direction. Feedback from interested parties will be carefully considered as part of the rulemaking process, the CFPB added.
The bureau invited industry stakeholders to visit its website for additional details, www.consumerfinance.gov, and to email commentary and proposals no later than Jan. 25, 2023, to Financial_Data_Rights_SBREFA@cfpb.gov . 
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