Global Interoperability in Open Finance: 18 Months On

In September 2024, I published Global Interoperability, making the case that open finance would only deliver on its promise if the underlying plumbing was standardised globally, not just market by market. Eighteen months later, the landscape has changed considerably. More markets. More data. More urgency.

Three arguments from that piece have aged particularly well, and one of them is still unresolved.

“Each market taking a different approach results in lots of ‘wheels being reinvented’.” This was true in 2024 and it remains true today. The cost of fragmentation keeps accumulating. A European Commission study on the impact of PSD2 estimated the industry API build cost across the EU alone at approximately €2.2 billion upfront, plus €300 million a year recurring. That is the price of doing it differently everywhere.

“We already have a global security standard for open finance: FAPI.” FAPI 1.0 and 2.0 have since been adopted across the UK, Brazil, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Australia, and the US (via FDX). The security layer is close to settled. What remains unsettled is everything around it: the API scopes, consent flows, data models, and commercial frameworks.

“The underlying plumbing should be standardised not just within a single market, but globally across all markets.” This was an aspiration in 2024. In 2026, it is an active priority for regulators, international standards bodies, and the Bank for International Settlements. The detail of that shift matters and we cover it at the end of this piece.

Where the world stands now

When I wrote that article, open banking was active in roughly 60–70 jurisdictions. Today, our Open Finance Tracker Innovation Atlas maps over 80 markets with some form of framework in place or actively in development. 43 countries are already extending beyond open banking into broader open finance, covering fx, insurance, pensions, investments, digital assets, and service initiation, such as quotes and account opening.

The growth is not just in market count. The depth and maturity of those implementations has shifted significantly. The original article described open banking as mostly regulation-led and largely compliance-focused. What is happening now is something different: the early movers are generating real data, real transactions, and in some markets, real revenue.

New markets starting their journey

Several significant markets have either launched or materially advanced their frameworks in the past 18 months. Each is worth watching.

Canada passed the Consumer-Driven Banking Act (Bill C-69) in 2024, with the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada confirmed as the oversight authority. Canada is targeting a live framework by early 2026, making it one of the last major Western economies to formally enter this space.

New Zealand enacted its Consumer and Product Data Act 2025, with CDR for banking effective December 2025. New Zealand’s Inland Revenue issued an open banking RFP in July 2025, a clear signal that the government intends to build on the regulatory foundation quickly.

Colombia just released (April 2026) an update on the regulatory decree covering more than 200 financial entities. It follows Brazil’s lead and is one of several Latin American markets accelerating in the same direction.

Africa is moving faster than many expected. The Open Finance African Group launched in April 2024 with major regional players including BGFI Bank, GIM-UEMOA, HPS, and InTouch. Nigeria, Kenya, and the broader WAEMU region are all progressing, with financial inclusion and access to credit as the primary drivers.

The UAE passed a comprehensive Open Finance regulation in 2024, establishing a centralised API hub model. It is building on the UK and Brazil models but adding a broader scope of use cases, a clear commercial framework for monetisation, and mandatory participation across all financial institutions. It is the most ambitious implementation architecture currently in active build.

Saudi Arabia moved from Account Information Services (Phase 1) to Payment Initiation Services (Phase 2) rollout during 2024. SAMA’s target is 100% bank participation.

In the EU, the Council and Parliament reached a provisional agreement on PSD3 and the Payment Services Regulation in November 2025, directly addressing the API inconsistency that made PSD2 so operationally expensive. The Financial Data Access (FiDA) framework — extending open data access to insurance and pensions — is also advancing through the legislative pipeline.

In the UK, the Data (Use and Access) Bill progressed through Parliament in late 2024. The Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy (July 2025) confirmed the FCA as the open banking regulator, committed to a Smart Data Accelerator, and set out a target $13 billion smart data economy.

You can explore the current state of all these frameworks — including the underlying standards, regulatory detail, and implementation stage — through the Ozone API Open Finance Tracker Standards Library and Innovation Atlas, built with Smart Data Foundry.

What the numbers actually show

The original article painted a picture of enormous potential not yet realised. The data from 2025 shows that realisation has started, though unevenly across markets.

The United Kingdom remains the most data-transparent ecosystem in the world. By December 2025, 16.5 million consumers had active open banking connections, up 36% year-on-year. The platform processed 24 billion API calls across 2025, with a single-month peak of 2.04 billion in July. Open banking payments reached 351 million across the year, a 57% increase on 2024, and 7.9% of all UK Faster Payments now run over open banking rails. One in eight UK e-commerce transactions goes through open banking infrastructure.

Brazil continues to operate at a scale that still surprises people. The system handles over 96 billion API calls per month. The BCB Open Finance Hub processes 2.3 billion daily authentication requests. 35 million consumers are actively using open finance services — and Brazil scaled to that level five times faster than the UK did. The account-to-account transaction value running through the system reached $19 trillion in 2023.

India’s Account Aggregator framework has connected 2.13 billion financial accounts across 631 institutions and four regulators. In 2025 alone, the system handled 145.6 million consent requests and facilitated approximately $20 billion in loans across 18.9 million loan applications. This is the most significant financial inclusion story open banking has produced anywhere in the world.

Australia saw its API call volume more than double in the 12 months to August 2025, reaching 1.88 billion. Users with open banking-enabled applications reported average monthly savings of AUD $330 and a 21% increase in savings balances after three months of active use.

The United States presents a different picture. FDX-connected accounts via API reached 114 million by April 2025, reflecting substantial market-led adoption. But the regulatory environment shifted sharply. The CFPB’s Section 1033 rule — finalised in October 2024 — faced immediate legal challenge, the new administration moved to vacate its own regulation, and a federal court enjoined enforcement in October 2025. The US has no binding open banking mandate as of early 2026. Meanwhile, JP Morgan announced plans to charge third-party providers for API data access — a move that changed the commercial conversation in ways that will take some time to play out. We covered the full story of Section 1033 here.

The Middle East is advancing steadily. Over 75% of UAE and Saudi consumers say they would share financial data in exchange for better services. Saudi Arabia’s digital wallet customer base reached 14.4 million in 2024, up 52% year-on-year. The commercial intent is there; the open finance infrastructure to act on it is being built now.

Stepping back: total global open banking payment transaction value was $57 billion in 2023, projected to reach $330 billion by 2027. Global API call volumes hit 137 billion in 2025 and are projected to exceed 720 billion by 2029.

Why interoperability is more critical now than ever

In 2024, interoperability was a strategic argument. In 2026, it is becoming a practical requirement, and the pressure is coming from multiple directions simultaneously.

The standards divergence problem is getting worse before it gets better. ISO 20022 completed its full transition for international payment messages in November 2025, improving cross-border payment interoperability at the message layer. But open banking consent models, data schemas, and commercial frameworks remain highly fragmented. FAPI is the settled security layer. Alongside that, every market has made different choices. Financial institutions operating across the UK, EU, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Australia are managing four distinct consent flows and data models today. The cost of that is real: it is in engineering budgets, integration timelines, and the difficulty of scaling any cross-border proposition.

Cross-border is now on the regulatory agenda, not just the industry wish list. BIS Project Aperta, published in October 2024, is specifically focused on cross-border data portability through open finance interoperability. The G20 Cross-Border Payments Roadmap continues to treat API alignment as a core enabler. The CPMI published API harmonisation recommendations in October 2024. BIS Project Nexus is testing live interlinks between Singapore’s PayNow, India’s UPI, Thailand’s PromptPay, and Malaysia’s RPP. These are not working papers; they are active infrastructure projects.

Verification of Payee (VOP) is the near-term proving ground. It went live as a mandatory requirement for all Eurozone PSPs in October 2025. VOP is a concrete, measurable use case for interoperability working in practice: a real-time check requiring standardised communication between sending and receiving institutions. The extension to non-euro EU countries follows in July 2027. APP fraud, business email compromise, and IBAN/name mismatches are cross-border problems. Solving them properly requires cross-border infrastructure that speaks the same language. Early data on VOP’s fraud reduction impact will emerge later in 2026 as the first post-mandate reporting cycles complete.

The commercial stakes have changed. In 2024, the interoperability argument centred on compliance efficiency. Today, banks are beginning to actively monetise their APIs. Payment initiation, identity verification, Confirmation of Payee, and premium data access all have emerging commercial models. A bank building these products for business customers across multiple markets needs a coherent framework to price and operate them. Fragmentation is not just a compliance cost at this point — it is a ceiling on the commercial opportunity. We explored what those commercial models look like in depth in our recent guide Commercialising Open Banking.

New markets should not have to reinvent the plumbing. Canada, Colombia, and the countries across Africa and Southeast Asia now entering the space have an opportunity the early movers did not: they can adopt the most effective elements of proven frameworks rather than starting from scratch. But that only works if those frameworks are documented, accessible, and designed with interoperability in mind from day one. The Open Finance Tracker exists precisely to make that easier.

The USB analogy still holds

In the original article, I used the USB standard as an analogy: every device conforms to the same interface, regardless of what connects to it. That has not become less relevant. If anything, it is more apt now.

The markets that move fastest from compliance to commerce will be the ones that stop rebuilding the plug for every market and focus instead on what gets connected. That requires regulations kept light touch. It requires FAPI and compatible consent frameworks wherever possible. And it requires centralised trust infrastructure, not because it is conceptually tidy, but because PSD2 showed us what happens when you build without it.

Eighteen months on, the direction of travel is clear. The pace of convergence is the open question. The evidence from BIS, CPMI, G20, PSD3, and the markets now entering this space suggests that convergence is being taken seriously at a level it has not been before. That is progress. It is not yet enough.

Explore the current state of open banking and open finance frameworks around the world on the Ozone API Open Finance Tracker, including the Innovation Atlas and the Standards Library.