In a shift toward giving fintechs greater access to banking data, National Bank, which recently bought the financial-data platform, will use the startup’s Open Banking Environment to share customer data directly with third parties, the company told The Logic. (The Logic)

Talking point: Open Banking Environment is the first open platform for data-sharing between banks and fintechs in Canada, Dominique Samson, Flinks’s chief operating officer, said in an interview. Most fintech apps retrieve banking data through a technique called screen-scraping, which pulls information from bank accounts without financial institutions’ consent and comes with security concerns. Instead, National Bank will now allow any fintech that undergoes an accreditation process to access customer data on Open Banking Environment—similar to how data-sharing would work under a more formal open banking system, delays over which have prompted complaints from fintech companies. Flinks hopes to bring other banks to the platform, Samson said, though discussions with those companies are still in early stages.