A coalition of US crypto, fintech and retail groups is uniting to defend open banking, warning in a letter that big banks’ attempts to charge for data access could suffocate the links between the financial system and digital wallets and stablecoins.
Groups including the Blockchain Association, the Crypto Council for Innovation, the National Association of Convenience Stores and the National Retail Federation have written to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), asking the regulator to preserve key protections in its pending Rule 1033.
The rule will give consumers the right to freely share their financial data with third-party services, allowing them to connect bank accounts to crypto exchanges, stablecoin wallets and other fintech platforms.
The coalition said big banks are lobbying to narrow who qualifies as a consumer representative and to impose fees for data access. Those changes would entrench incumbents, weaken competition and cut crypto and digital wallets’ connections to the U.S. banking system, the group said.
“A strong open banking rule is essential to a competitive, thriving and innovative financial services ecosystem,” the letter reads. “Over the past decade, many of the financial innovations Americans use today were developed with the political certainty that the United States was moving toward an open banking system.”
While banks say that open banking services would increase costs for them, the coalition argued that those costs – like cloud storage and technology infrastructure – are routine and expected for any modern bank around the world.
The coalition warned that weakening Rule 1033 could leave the US behind other major economies such as Britain, Singapore and Brazil, where open banking frameworks are already standard.
“Strong open banking rules are what keep America competitive,” the group wrote, urging the CFPB to finalize Rule 1033 “without capitulating to the biggest banks’ attempts to tax access to Americans’ own financial data.”
