The growth of open banking is historically driven by environmental factors. In environments marked by wealth inequality, or a lack of trust in traditional finance, open banking flourishes as a promising alternative. Conversely, in stable environments, it often stagnates, viewed as a needless risk. Canada, known for its risk aversion, exemplifies this trend. To open season 5 of Mr. Open Banking, Eyal sits down with Abraham Tachjian, Director of Digital Banking at PwC Canada and the former Open Banking Lead for all of Canada, to discuss whether conservative Canada will be ready for the coming wave. In March of 2022, Abraham was appointed by the Canadian Department of Finance to lead the development of a national open banking framework, and for the last two years he has been doing just that. Eyal and Abraham explore the key role Abraham has had in delivering a guidebook for open banking in Canada, lessons learned along the way, and what the next steps are for all stakeholders involved.



Specifically they discuss: 

• The formative years of open banking in Canada

• The importance of strong governance 

• How the work was structured and approached

• Canadian open banking versus the other regions

• The future of open banking in Canada

To make open banking work the way it is meant to, you need three major building blocks; data exchange, payments and digital ID. While many countries are working on these pieces, there is really only one place that has already built them all, into a fully-integrated, cohesive whole, at population scale: India. In the season four finale of Mr. Open Banking, Eyal sits down with Dr. Pramod Varma to discuss the uniquely successful digital transformation of India. Pramod is the Chief Architect behind a set of national systems known collectively as the India Stack, widely considered one of the most successful implementations of digital public infrastructure (DPI) in the world. The India stack includes Aadhaar, India's digital identity program for over 1.3 billion people, and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which today processes over 12 billion transactions a month. Eyal and Pramod take a journey through the history of digital transformation in India, and how they aim to become a fountainhead for the successful implementation of Digital Public Infrastructure all over the world.

Specifically they discuss:

• The meteoric rise of Aadhaar

• How UPI drove financial inclusion

• The bottom-up approach to open banking

• Opening healthcare, e-commerce and more

• Creating Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)

Europe, widely considered the birthplace of open banking, has been on a journey to digitize their financial system for over 20 years. In this episode, we speak to a guest who has been on that road since the beginning, at the nexus of finance, technology and regulation. Dr. Ruth Wandhöfer has been instrumental in shaping the future of finance in Europe, having positioned herself as one of the leading experts in the region. She is a widely sought after speaker, writer and professor, with her opinions published in Sifted, The Financial Times and Forbes. She has published three books on digital finance, most recently, Redecentralisation – Building Our Digital Financial Ecosystem in 2023. Together, Eyal and Ruth delve into the origin of open banking in Europe, from the original Payment Services Directive to PSD2 , through to the future under PSD3. They then go well beyond, as they explore the future of our digital society at large.

 

Specifically they discuss:

• The history of open banking

• Going from PSD to PSD2 to PSD3

• How Web3 and CBDC will play a role

• The Digital States that run our lives

• Creating a Digital Social Contract

What defines the value of a thing? Is it a question of utility, aesthetics, rarity, emotional connection, or a combination of all these aspects? When it comes to digital assets, this question becomes even more complex, as evidenced by the rise and subsequent fall of NFTs. Beyond just digital, The continued evolution of Web3 and DeFi has now set the physical world and the digital world on a collision course, changing perceptions of ownership, trade and value. To dig deeper into the philosophical question of digital value and its impact on the physical world, Eyal turns to Bianca Lopes, economist, serial entrepreneur, and international speaker on the subjects of data, identity, fintech and crypto. Over the course of her career, Bianca has supported over 40 financial institutions and 8 governments to reshape their approach to technology, rethink the role of identity, and drive their innovation agendas, as she helps them understand the impact that data, identity and the future of finance will have on our lives.

Specifically they discuss:



• The rise and fall of NFTs

• Determining the value of digital assets

• How to go from speculation to utility

• Creating digital twins for physical things

• Building a sustainable, circular economy

Data fuels our digital lives, helping us make decisions, build relationships, and stay organized. To achieve these goals, we willingly share our personal data with various service providers, who give us search engines, social networks and e-commerce. But somewhere in the bargain, those providers encroached far beyond what the typical user understood. Our personal information, what makes us us, wasn’t just given, it was taken, in a way that makes it very hard to get back. To unpack this asymmetry and discuss a way forward, Eyal sits down with Liz Brandt, Co-Founder and CEO of Ctrl-Shift, a strategy and business innovation consultancy specializing in helping businesses realize the strategic value of trusted personal data. Anticipating that the use of personal data would become critical, Liz started the consulting firm Ctrl-Shift over 13 years ago, dedicating her career to identifying the opportunities and solving the challenges presented by the emergent personal information economy.

Specifically they discuss: 

• Why privacy remains important
• Understanding the information sharing relationship
• The evolution of Ctrl-Shift 
• Striking a balance between privacy and growth
• The role of standardization and legislation

For most people, wallets are a staple accessory of their everyday lives. Yet today, the analog wallet is disappearing, to be replaced, like so many other things, by its digital twin. Digital wallets are now a reality and, like their physical predecessors, they will become an intrinsic part of our lives, so making sure they are built the right way is critical. To discuss the future of digital wallets, Eyal turns to Daniel Goldscheider, Founder of the OpenWallet Foundation, an organization dedicated to enabling a trusted digital future through interoperability for a wide range of use cases that leverage the software construct known as a digital wallet. Before founding the OpenWallet Foundation, Daniel was CEO of yes.com, a digital banking platform, and co-founded Mediaguide with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers alongside Aureus Private Equity. He has served on the boards of the Global Footprint Network and Identity Trust Management, demonstrating his deep history building systems that aim to enshrine data rights.

Specifically they discuss: 

• The benefits of digital wallets
• What is driving the proliferation of digital wallets
• Digital wallets versus authenticator apps
• The technology behind digital wallets
• The relationship between digital wallets and open banking

Open banking is often cast as an antidote to the dominance of big banks. Given that its origins stem from the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, this perspective is not terribly surprising. But is this characterisation a fair one? Does open banking have to be a threat to big banks, or can it be turned into an opportunity? To answer these questions and more, we turn to Paul LaRusso. Paul is a business leader with over 20 years of experience in mobile financial services and technology. Paul is the CEO of Akoya, a bank-sanctioned data access network that is leading the way in the US open finance sector. Prior to joining Akoya, Paul served as the Head of Open Banking and Connected Banking at JP Morgan Chase, where he held technology leadership positions for almost 15 years. Today as head of Akoya, Paul aims to transform the way people share their data, making it more secure, private, reliable, and transparent. In this episode, Eyal and Paul unpack the history of open banking and the evolution in the market-driven approach that Paul has had the benefit of seeing up close.

Specifically they discuss: 

• The history of open banking
• The benefits of CFPB regulations
• What the US can learn from the UK
• What the big banks need to know
• Why open banking is a two-way street

It’s no secret that global banking is experiencing some macroeconomic headwinds. Bank failures and consolidations continue to spread, albeit slowly. The question then becomes: How do these negative trends influence the direction of open data?

Marie has been studying open consented data sharing since 2016. Through her current role as Open Futurist at Raidiam, she helps bring together the best people with the best ideas, facilitating the right conversations, and promoting the benefits of open data for consumers, businesses, countries and society at large. Eyal and Marie discuss the history of Open Future World, the current trajectory of open banking, and the shifting views of market players and regulators alike as they try to answer the burning question: Is open banking dead? 

Specifically they discuss: 

• The rise and fall of Open Future World
• The effect of economic headwinds
• Why some banks still hesitate to invest
• Ecosystems within ecosystems
• The Raidiam trust framework

In the extended season finale of Mr. Open Banking, Eyal directly tackles the question of how open banking will change the way we interact with our money, in an attempt to build a vision of the open future. To do so, he breaks the problem down into the three core concepts at the heart of that claim: money, identity and open banking. When it comes to exploring the interplay between digital money and digital identity, one would be hard-pressed to find someone more knowledgeable than his guest, David G.W. Birch. An internationally-recognised author, advisor and commentator on digital financial services, David is often a keynote speaker at industry conferences and international events, a featured guest on business and finance television programs, and a regular contributor to prominent financial publications, including Forbes and The Financial Times. He is also the author of four books, including The Currency Cold War in 2020 and 2014’s Identity is the New Money, his seminal and prescient work on the future of finance. During their discussion, Eyal and David explore a wide range of topics, including the importance of reputation and how the money of the future resembles the money of the past.

Specifically they discuss: 

• The shifting form and function of money
• The relationship between money, identity and reputation
• Why cash becoming irrelevant is a good thing
• How money is really a platform for trust
• How digital identity differs from identity in the real world
• Why open banking standards should support identity
• Banks as the antidote to the one-sided Internet of today

As the open banking movement continues to unfold, many people are asking an obvious but entirely valid question: can we trust open banking? In this episode, Eyal explores the concept of trust in open banking, and how we can learn to trust the data sharing ecosystem upon which open banking is being built. To inform the discussion, he sits down with Ralph Bragg, the Co-Founder and CTO of Raidiam, a company that’s on a mission to create the world’s smartest, most trustworthy data sharing ecosystems. As an internationally-renowned expert in open banking technical standards and trust frameworks, Ralph helped the UK, Brazil and other regions build open banking they could trust. Together, Eyal and Ralph tackle what a data sharing ecosystem actually is, what it does and who the actors are that drive it forward, as well as essential security concepts like authentication, authorization and identity. Most importantly, Eyal and Ralph discuss why increasing consumer trust in open banking is critical, not just for the short term, but to rightly steer the evolution of the Internet itself for decades to come.

Specifically they discuss: 

• The purpose of a data sharing ecosystem
• Strengthening trust in open ecosystems
• Key definitions around identity, security and consent
• Building an effective trust framework
• How trust is enabled in the UK and Brazil
• Comparing aggregated and federated models
• Why trust is critical to the future of the Internet