Will this year be the year that the “wild west” of Open Banking finally takes over? Throughout 2021, there were many new innovations and changes linked to open banking as it continued to redefine our way of understanding financial institutions and their markets. But even now, after two years of a global pandemic, there still exist big gaps between the ways that customers manage their finances and the innovations that continue to appear on the horizon.

A new report by Mastercard supports the opinion that open banking is here to stay and there is no going back. It is important to remember that “open” does not just mean “digital”. In reality, this phenomenon sees the arrival of thousands of businesses from outside the world of finance as they begin to identify business opportunities to satisfy the needs and demands of the financial customer. At the same time, bigger players and traditional banks have seen themselves forced to focus on elements such as the customer experience, hyper-personalised services and cooperative competition with niche firms and highly agile, specialist startups.

Open banking places consumers at the heart of the matter, providing them with control over where and how their data is used to provide the services they want more efficiently. Once authorised by customers, fintechs and banks can use this data to provide more inclusive and easier access to credit, finance management tools, digital wallets and payments services. In fact, this phenomenon is already present in so much of our daily lives, possibly more than we realise. But a market is worthless without customers, and this is why it is so important to ensure that consumers take to this new playing field, which has been specially designed with their interests and benefits in mind.

Here at GDS Modellica, we wanted to summarise some of the most important points from this report in the form of an infographic. This way, our readers can quickly get an idea of the most relevant facts about the current state of Open Banking.