As Canadian fintechs await clarity from Ottawa on whether banks will be allowed to charge for access to customer data under upcoming open banking rules, a fight is brewing south of the border. 

On Tuesday, two U.S. banking groups filed a court challenge against an open banking framework released earlier that day by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), arguing it’s unfair to force banks to grant competitors free access to their data.

Battle of the U.S. banks: Under the CFPB’s framework, banks would have to give away data to any fintech that agrees to meet certain requirements and gets a consumer’s express consent, letting them power accounting software, budgeting apps and other services. In a release, the regulator said the new policy will promote competition and make payments and data-sharing more secure. The Bank Policy Institute and Kentucky Bankers Association disagree, arguing that the agency overstepped its authority: “Banks should be able to charge third parties who seek access to that sensitive data, just as companies charge one another for products and services,” the Bank Policy Institute said in a release.

Canada falls behind: Details are scarce on whether Canadian banks will be allowed to charge fintechs for open banking data and impose rules on how they access it. On Thursday, The Logic reported that bank-owned tech company Symcor is approaching financial services firms to participate in a test version of an open banking platform designed to provide customer data to fintechs. The fintechs are suspicious that banks will require them to exclusively go through the platform for a fee.

For now, the concerns are purely hypothetical, as National Bank is the only large Canadian bank that has released a data feed that can plug into Symcor’s data platform. This contrasts with banks in the U.S., where this is common practice. Open banking is also already available in the U.K. and Australia.

A fragmented system: Cato Pastoll, founder and CEO of Toronto-based fintech Loop, which offers a platform that helps small businesses make international payments, said the uneven availability of open banking data in different countries creates challenges for his company. It’s much easier to provide services to customers of U.S. banks with live data feeds, Pastoll said. A single, international standard for open banking data access would make life much easier for Loop’s customers who want to manage all their international payments in one place, Pastoll added. “We’re trying to get closer to that ideal.”

What’s next: The federal Liberals passed the first of two sets of open banking legislation in June and have said they will introduce the second piece this fall. After that, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, the organization responsible for overseeing open banking, will create a framework for how the system will operate, similar to the one the U.S. CFPB released this week. Finance Canada has said it aims to launch the first phase of open banking in 2025, while large banks will have to comply with the CFPB’s rules starting in April 2026. That is, if they survive the court challenge.