JPMorgan Chase said it reached agreements to ensure the banking giant will get paid by fintech firms responsible for almost all the data requests made by third-party apps connected to customer bank accounts.
CNBC reported that Chase signed updated contracts with fintech middlemen that comprise more than 95% of the data pulls on its systems, including Morningstar, Plaid, Yodlee, and Akoy.
“We’ve come to agreements that will make the open banking ecosystem safer and more sustainable and allow customers to continue reliably and securely accessing their favorite financial products,” JPMorgan spokesman Drew Pusateri said in a statement. “The free market worked.”
CNBC said the announcement is the latest development in a long-standing dispute between traditional banks and the fintech industry over access to customer accounts. For years, the middlemen paid nothing to tap into bank systems when a customer wanted to use a fintech app such as Robinhood to draw funds or check balances, CNBC said.
In late 2024, the Biden-era Consumer Financial Protection Bureau appeared to have enshrined that approach as law when it finalized what is known as the “open-banking rule” that requires banks to share at no cost its customers’ data with other financial firms.
Negotiations Led to the Deal With JPMorgan
Banks sued to prevent the CFPB rule from taking hold, however, and seemed to gain the upper hand in May when the Trump administration asked a federal court to vacate the rule, CNBC said.
JPMorgan — the largest U.S. bank by assets, deposits, and branches — reportedly told the middlemen that it would start charging what amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars for access to its customers’ data.
Fintech, crypto, and venture capital executives responded by arguing that the bank was engaging in “anti-competitive, rent-seeking behavior” that would hurt innovation as well consumers’ ability to use popular apps, CNBC said.
Weeks of negotiations ensued the bank and the middlemen and JPMorgan agreed to lower pricing than it originally proposed, and the fintech middlemen won concessions concerning servicing of data requests, CNBC said, citing people with knowledge of the talks.
The fintech firms said they preferred the certainty of locking in data-sharing rates because it is unclear whether the current CFPB, which is currently revising the open-banking rule, would favor banks or fintech companies.
CNBC said JPMorgan and the fintechs declined to disclose details about the contracts, including how much the middlemen agreed to pay and how long the deals are in force.
