Open Banking Coming To Canada

Canada is getting something new called “Consumer Driven Banking,” which is also known as “Open Banking.” This means that big banks will have to let you use new financial technology services.

The good news is that this will make banking services better because companies will compete to offer you a refreshing landscape of new and competitive better services, but there’s a downside too. With all these new companies, there will be many more privacy and security problems. Some will be on purpose, some will be “accidents”, and some will be malicious actors trying to steal your information. So, we need to be careful when we give any app or company access to our bank accounts.

The government’s economic statement from a couple days ago calls for the final legislative rules for Open Banking to be in the 2024 budget. These rules will deal with who is responsible if something goes wrong, what the rules are, and how to make sure things are safe. They will also have a government group in charge of watching over everything and making sure everyone follows the rules, but you don’t want to ask me how confident I am in that group.

Also, they are changing the Payments Act to let payment companies have more access to the payment system, which is a big change in Canada.

For more details, 2023 Fall Economic Statement: Policy Statement on Consumer-Driven Banking