🇪🇳 Open Banking: will define finance by 2026. Learn how data-sharing, APIs, and AI are transforming the market and empowering consumers globally.

The Data Revolution That Will Define Finance by 2026

By: Túlio Whitman | Repórter Diário

Open Banking, which allows third-party service providers to securely access consumer financial data from traditional banks via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), is fundamentally changing the way financial services are delivered. It shifts the power dynamic, making user control over personal financial information the central axis of the modern financial system. As a journalist covering the complexities of finance, I, Túlio Whitman, see this not merely as a regulatory requirement but as an inevitable cultural and technological evolution that will solidify its dominance by 2026, forcing all financial institutions to adapt or face irrelevance. As reported by Stripe, this model boosts transparency, competition, and innovation by breaking down data barriers.

The Shift to Consumer-Driven Finance

Open Banking represents a pivotal moment in finance, moving from a system where financial information was a closed asset reserved for institutions to one where data belongs to the user. The core mechanism is secure data sharing, allowing authorized third parties (often Fintechs) to offer a host of innovative services, from personalized budgeting tools to faster, more efficient payment solutions. By 2026, the maturity of Open Banking will largely define the global financial landscape, making its implementation a requirement for institutional survival and evolution, not just a competitive advantage. This framework creates a level playing field, enabling interoperability and accelerating innovation across the board, ultimately bringing the financial system back to its original purpose: to serve people.

🔍 Zoom na realidade

The immediate reality of Open Banking is its profound impact on market competition and the customer experience. Traditionally, large, established banks held a near-monopoly on customer data, which created significant barriers to entry for smaller or newer financial technology (Fintech) companies. Open Banking, through mandated standardized data formats and secure communication protocols, dismantles these barriers. This regulatory-driven change promotes a more vibrant ecosystem where neobanks and specialized service providers can directly compete by offering highly tailored and often cheaper products, like credit cards with better rewards or savings accounts with higher interest rates, simply by analyzing a consumer’s comprehensive financial picture.

This shift moves financial institutions from a logic of closed competition to one of open collaboration and collective goal setting, prioritizing customer well-being. The customer, for their part, gains unprecedented convenience. Multibanking is a prime example: users can access and manage all their bank accounts from different institutions through a single, central digital banking system. This simplification of financial management, facilitated by robust API-driven ecosystems, translates into practical benefits such as quick income verification for loan applications, real-time fraud prevention, and personalized financial advice based on holistic data analysis.

For both consumers and businesses, Open Banking enhances efficiency and accessibility, setting the stage for a customer-centric partnership model in finance, rather than the traditional, siloed approach. The trend toward embedded finance, where financial services are integrated directly into non-financial platforms (like paying for a taxi or an e-commerce purchase directly from your bank account via an open banking connection), is another significant manifestation of this reality, offering a seamless financial experience that is expected to become the standard by 2026. This democratization of data underpins the entire shift.

📊 Panorama em números

The quantitative evidence underscores Open Banking's rapid and significant ascent as a global financial force. Forecasts and adoption rates indicate that the framework is moving from a niche innovation to a mainstream utility worldwide.

API Call Volume: A key metric is the volume of Application Programming Interface (API) calls, which reflects the technical exchange of data. The total Open Banking API call volume is projected to reach 137 billion in 2025 globally, with a massive leap expected to surpass 720 billion globally by 2029. This surge represents a 427 percent growth from 2025 to 2029, illustrating the exponential adoption and integration of open data capabilities across the financial sector.
Adoption Rates: The UK, a pioneer in Open Banking, shows high adoption. The Open Banking Impact Report published in March 2024 indicated that 13% of digitally active consumers and 18% of small businesses were already using Open Banking services. This figure is constantly rising, with consumer adoption catching up as more people discover the benefits of faster payments and improved financial tools. In key European countries like France, Germany, Spain, and Italy, adoption has historically been lower but is accelerating, highlighting a global trend toward market maturity.
Consumer Demand: A 2021 study by Accenture noted that 76% of banks worldwide anticipate a customer adoption and usage surge of Open Banking APIs to increase by 50% or more between 2024 and 2026. This consumer-driven demand is fuelled by the desire for more personalized, convenient, and consolidated banking experiences.

The numbers clearly illustrate that Open Banking is transitioning from a regulatory mandate to a commercially viable ecosystem. The increasing number of API calls signifies the growing utility of data sharing for everything from sophisticated credit analytics to enabling Account-to-Account (A2A) payments. This rapid scaling demonstrates that by 2026, any institution that has not fully embraced the Open Banking infrastructure will be operating at a severe quantitative disadvantage in terms of customer reach and product innovation.

💬 O que dizem por aí

Discussions and expert opinions surrounding Open Banking frequently highlight a shift in narrative: from one focused on regulatory compliance to one centered on commercial viability and customer value. The consensus among industry leaders is that the initial mandate provided the foundational rails, but sustainable growth now depends on building valuable services upon them.

Customer Empowerment: Many voices emphasize that the consumer is now dictating the terms. Binur Zhalenov, a key figure in the financial landscape, articulated this: "Now the consumer will dictate. It will be very easy to switch from one ecosystem to another, which will drive more competition in the market and which automatically will make the fees lower and innovation some[what] m¹ore intense." This suggests that the ultimate success of Open Banking is tied directly to the customer's ability to switch providers easily.
Future of Payments: Experts also project Open Banking as a critical component for payment resilience. Pippa Ward-Bradley from Paydock mentioned: "Open banking presents a crucial failover opportunity for payments, especially in physical retail." This outlook transforms Open Banking from merely an alternative method into an essential component for continuity in payment systems. Furthermore, the rise of Account-to-Account (A2A) payments, enabled by Open Banking, is seen as a key driver for a seamless payment experience globally, replacing error-prone manual entry with quick, insightful transfers.
Shift in Institutional Mindset: There is a common understanding that Open Banking is a cultural shift. It demands institutions move from a logic of closed-off data to one of open collaboration. Carlos Albo, CEO of Wenalyze, summarized the evolution: "The narrative around open banking is rightly shifting from regulatory compliance to commercial viability... This transition from a defensive, compliance-first posture to one of proactive value creation is the most critical challenge and opportunity facing the industry today."

The prevailing sentiment is that by 2026, Open Banking will be fully integrated into the financial fabric, with its impact extending beyond pure banking into areas like integrated insurance, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), and even Digital Identity solutions, ultimately becoming an interoperable, cross-border phenomenon.

🧭 Caminhos possíveis

The roadmap for Open Banking’s future points toward several inevitable developments, all converging on a hyper-personalized, fully integrated financial ecosystem. These possible paths are not mutually exclusive but represent layers of maturity for the open data movement.

Open Finance and Open Data: The immediate next step for Open Banking is to expand into Open Finance. This means applying the same data-sharing principles to a wider array of financial products beyond just current accounts and payments, including savings, pensions, insurance products, and investments. Furthermore, the ultimate horizon is a full Open Data economy, where the secure sharing of data extends beyond finance to utility bills, healthcare records, and other consumer data points. This will enable services like personalized utility switching or seamless insurance claims, built on a foundation of user-consented data portability.
Embedded Finance Dominance: By 2026, the lines between financial institutions and third-party services will be further blurred, making Embedded Finance ubiquitous. This is where financial services are seamlessly offered at the point of need within non-financial platforms. Think of taking out a micro-loan within an e-commerce checkout or getting business financing directly within your accounting software. This demands banks transition into coordination centers that facilitate these interactions, offering API-driven services rather than only proprietary products.
Cross-Border Interoperability: Currently, Open Banking frameworks are largely national or regional (e.g., the UK, the EU’s PSD2). A key possible path is the development of international, cross-border data portability standards. This would enhance global activities like trade finance and enable multinational businesses and consumers to manage their finances seamlessly across different jurisdictions. The push for a unified global approach will accelerate as leading markets learn from one another, allowing open banking leaders to expand their horizons internationally.
AI-Driven Hyper-Personalization: The true power of Open Banking lies in the rich data it unlocks. By 2026, Agentic AI—advanced AI capable of performing complex, multi-step tasks with minimal human involvement—will utilize this open data to act as personal financial assistants. These agents could automatically shop for the best mortgage rates, balance investment portfolios, and reconcile complex business transactions by interacting with various third-party apps on the user's behalf, taking personalization to a new, fully automated level. These paths collectively define a future where finance is invisible, immediate, and utterly tailored to the individual.

🧠 Para pensar…

The essential question that Open Banking raises for society is: Who truly controls your financial future when your data is unlocked? While the official narrative champions consumer control and empowerment, the reality is more nuanced, posing a critical philosophical challenge to the digital age.

The fundamental shift is the move from a system defined by institutional trust (trusting your bank to hold your money and data) to one defined by systemic trust (trusting the security, regulation, and protocols of the Open Banking ecosystem). Consumers are given the right to consent to data sharing, but with the proliferation of new Fintech apps and services, the act of continually vetting, understanding, and managing these permissions can create consent fatigue. Is a consumer truly "in control" if they lack the technical or legal literacy to fully grasp the long-term implications of sharing their entire financial history with a third-party app?

Furthermore, the data unlocked by Open Banking is incredibly rich and valuable. While it allows for personalized services, it also creates an unprecedented opportunity for algorithmic bias and highly targeted marketing that could exploit financial vulnerabilities. For example, an AI agent, while seeking the best deal, could inadvertently steer a user toward a product based on discriminatory data patterns.

By 2026, as Open Banking becomes a standard, the debate will shift from if data should be shared to how society ensures that the economic benefits are distributed equitably, that data security is unassailable, and that the regulatory framework evolves to protect consumers from the unintended consequences of a hyper-efficient, data-driven financial world. This introspection is critical for building a truly transparent and democratic financial future.

📚 Ponto de partida

To fully grasp the mechanism and potential of Open Banking, one must start with its core technological enabler: Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). An API is essentially a set of definitions and protocols that allow one software application to communicate with another. In the context of Open Banking, APIs are the secure digital bridges that allow third-party providers (TPPs), such as budgeting apps or loan brokers, to retrieve specific financial data or initiate payments, but only with the express, verifiable consent of the customer.

Before Open Banking, a customer who wanted to share their data with a financial service often had to resort to the risky practice of "screen scraping," where they provided their bank login credentials to the third party, a process fraught with security risks. Open Banking replaces this with a mandated, standardized, and secure API framework.

The implementation of these APIs is typically governed by specific regulations, such as the Revised Payment Service Directive (PSD2) in Europe, which sets the technical standards for security, data formatting, and consent protocols. These standards ensure that:

Security is paramount: Data is exchanged using advanced encryption and authentication methods.
Consent is granular: The customer can choose exactly what data to share and for how long.
Identity is verified: TPPs must be regulated and accredited by relevant financial authorities to access these APIs.

Understanding APIs as the secure infrastructure is the point of departure because they transform a theoretical concept of "data sharing" into a functional, compliant, and scalable system. Without standardized, secure APIs, the whole ecosystem of personalized services, instant credit checks, and A2A payments could not exist. The quality and maturity of this API infrastructure are what will determine the pace and extent of Open Banking's impact by 2026.

📦 Box informativo 📚 Você sabia?

Open Banking: The Global Blueprint

Did you know that the concept of Open Banking, while now global, was initially driven by a need for competition and innovation in one specific country?

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) essentially mandated Open Banking for the nine largest banks (known as the CMA9) as a competition remedy following a market investigation. This move was intended to break the dominance of the biggest institutions and force them to share their customer data, thereby creating a more competitive environment. This mandated approach in the UK, often referred to as a regulatory push, has since served as a blueprint for over 60 other jurisdictions worldwide.

While the UK’s model focused heavily on competition, other regions are pursuing different objectives:

Canada's Consumer-Driven Banking Act (CDBA): Canada’s planned framework focuses on consumer-driven banking and has recently announced a shift in regulatory oversight to the Bank of Canada, signaling its strategic importance as a part of the nation’s core financial structure.
The US Approach: In the United States, the movement is less regulatory-driven and more market-driven, influenced by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which focuses on a consumer’s right to access their data.

This variation shows that while the technology (APIs) remains the same, the regulatory and cultural drivers for Open Banking adoption differ significantly by country. In the UK, it was a competition cure; in other parts of the world, it is being seen as a pathway to financial inclusion by enabling new models of credit assessment for the underbanked. The global nature of this movement, with different regions applying the model to different societal problems, is what makes its evolution so dynamic and its impact by 2026 so pervasive.

🗺️ Daqui pra onde?

The trajectory of Open Banking is irrevocably pointed towards becoming the invisible standard for financial interactions, evolving into a unified Open Data ecosystem. The direction of travel is clear: full integration and standardization.

By 2026, the discussion around Open Banking will no longer be about "if" it will be adopted, but "what more" it can do. The focus will shift from the initial compliance with data-sharing rules to the creation of premium, value-added services built on top of the open infrastructure. This means we are heading toward:

Hyper-Specialized Embedded Finance: We will see the maturation of super-apps and platforms that offer highly specialized financial services embedded within non-financial contexts. For instance, a small business could receive a real-time, pre-approved inventory loan offer directly within their e-commerce sales platform, based on the real-time financial data shared via Open Banking.
Zero Trust Security Architectures: As data sharing becomes routine, the industry will fully adopt Zero Trust security models, where no user or device is trusted by default, regardless of whether they are inside or outside the network. This heightened security focus will be mandatory to combat new fraud models and ensure the resilience of the ecosystem against sophisticated cyber threats.
Interoperability and Standardization: The move towards cross-border interoperability will gather pace. As global regulators and industry bodies collaborate, we will see the emergence of unified global standards for data exchange. This will facilitate easier international expansion for Fintechs and enable businesses to manage cross-border payments with unprecedented speed and transparency, ultimately making the global financial system more interconnected and efficient. The future is an environment where finance is not a destination (a bank branch or a separate app) but an integrated, seamless layer underpinning every digital transaction.

🌐 Tá na rede, tá oline

"O povo posta, a gente pensa. Tá na rede, tá oline!"

The sentiment circulating online and across social media platforms regarding Open Banking reflects a mixture of optimism for convenience and skepticism regarding data privacy. On one hand, many users, particularly the digitally savvy and early adopters, are celebrating the arrival of faster, cheaper, and more convenient services. The immediate positive feedback centers on budgeting apps that consolidate all accounts, making personal financial management significantly easier, and the smooth experience of Account-to-Account (A2A) payments that bypass traditional card networks. This community views Open Banking as a liberation from the restrictive practices of incumbent banks.

However, a significant and vocal contingent on the network raises crucial concerns about trust and security. The core anxiety stems from the idea of granting permissions to multiple third parties. Memes and discussions often focus on the complexity of consent, questioning whether users truly understand the extent of data they are sharing and the long-term data retention policies of the myriad of new Fintechs. The potential for scams and sophisticated fraud in a data-rich environment is a recurring worry. The online discourse, therefore, highlights the essential trade-off: convenience versus control.

Financial institutions and regulators are acutely aware of this online sentiment. Building consumer awareness and understanding of the advantages, particularly around robust data security measures, is frequently cited as a major challenge that needs to be addressed for mass adoption to fully take hold. Ultimately, the network demonstrates that the success of Open Banking by 2026 hinges not just on technological capability, but on winning the digital trust of the everyday user.

🔗 Âncora do conhecimento

To fully appreciate the context in which Open Banking is evolving—a context marked by rapid digital transformation and the blurring of financial boundaries—it is essential to examine the strategic positioning of global financial technology players. If you are interested in understanding how major groups are adapting their timelines and strategies in this hyper-competitive, open-data-driven world, we have an in-depth article that explains the competitive landscape and technological roadmaps. We encourage you to clique aqui to learn more about the strategic maneuvers of financial giants that are shaping tomorrow's Open Finance ecosystem.

Reflexão final

Open Banking is more than a financial regulation; it is an inflection point in the history of capital and technology. By 2026, its presence will not be felt as a distinct service but as the invisible infrastructure upon which all modern financial interactions rest. It represents the final, decisive move of financial power from the vault to the consumer's hand, placing data sovereignty at the core of personal finance.

The challenge ahead is not technical, but ethical and philosophical: to ensure that this great unlocking of data serves to democratize access and foster genuine well-being, rather than simply creating a new arena for complex algorithmic exploitation. The institutions that thrive will be those that embrace collaboration, transparency, and a relentless focus on the customer-defined value derived from their data. The age of closed banking is over; the future is open.

Featured Resources and Sources/Bibliography

Stripe. What is open banking and how does it work? (Accessed November 2025). https://stripe.com/resources/more/open-banking-explained
Mexico Business News. Toward 2026: The Challenge and Opportunity of Open Banking. (Accessed November 2025). https://mexicobusiness.news/finance/news/toward-2026-challenge-and-opportunity-open-banking
Juniper Research. Open Banking APIs Market Report 2025-29: Size, Trends. (Accessed November 2025). https://www.juniperresearch.com/research/fintech-payments/banking/open-banking-apis-market-research-report/
Open Banking UK. The Future is Open: Navigating the Next Phase of UK Open Banking. (Accessed November 2025). https://www.openbanking.org.uk/insights/the-future-is-open-navigating-the-next-phase-of-uk-open-banking/
Noda. Future of Open Banking: Revolutionising the Financial Landscape. (Accessed November 2025). https://noda.live/articles/future-of-open-banking

⚖️ Disclaimer Editorial

This article reflects a critical and opinionated analysis produced for the Carlos Santos Diary, based on public information, reports, and data from sources considered reliable in the financial technology sector. It does not represent official communication or the institutional position of any financial institutions, companies, or other entities that may be mentioned here, including Stripe. The views expressed are those of the author, Túlio Whitman. Readers are advised to perform their own due diligence and consult with professional financial advisors before making any decisions based on the trends and analyses presented.