On August 7, 2018, Jeremy Grant was quoted in PaymentsCompliance regarding the U.S. Treasury's support for the development of open banking, resulting in industry experts pressing authorities to allow for organic market growth versus forced innovation by legislation.
Last week, Treasury published a broad report on the state of fintech in the U.S., which includes many recommendations for future growth of the sector. A key recommendation, which experts believe could signal the extent of authorities’ oversight, calls for a comprehensive framework, allowing third-party access to consumers' financial accounts.
Mr. Grant observed that even in areas like the resolution of screen scraping – a source of much hand-wringing in Europe and elsewhere – the treasury placed the onus on companies to find a workable solution themselves.
Grant said, "Where you have seen tension is where some of the banks have put up walls ... saying that they’re not comfortable with third parties holding customer'’ usernames and passwords. The bigger issue beyond that is a lot of our banks are trying to put consumer-facing multi-factor authentication in place, and if you’re doing screen scraping that breaks the model."