European regulators reportedly want to block American tech giants from a new financial data-sharing system.<\/p>\n
As the Financial Times (FT) reported<\/a> Sunday (Sept. 21), the European Union aims to exclude Amazon<\/a>, Apple<\/a>, Google<\/a> and Meta<\/a> from this system, designed to allow for the development of digital consumer finance products.<\/p>\n This decision, the report added, would mark a victory for banks as they try to fend off competition from Big Tech, out of fear that these companies will extract the value of knowing consumer spending and saving patterns.<\/p>\n According to the FT, this is happening as negotiations on the Financial Data Access (FiDA)<\/a> regulation are entering their closing, with diplomats telling the news outlet that Big Tech groups will almost certainly face defeat.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is one file where the Big Tech players are actually losing the lobbying fight,\u201d said one EU diplomat.<\/p>\n The reforms aimed to empower third-party service providers to access data from banks and insurers and use them to create new services such as financial advice.\u00a0<\/p>\n Advertisement: Scroll to Continue<\/p>\n But Europe\u2019s financial industry has tried to limit access, contending it would risk so-called digital gatekeepers \u201cexploiting sensitive data\u201d possessed by European financial institutions and \u201cstrengthen any dominant position.\u201d<\/p>\n In a document sent to other EU countries, and seen by the FT, Germany argued in favor of barring Big Tech groups \u201cto promote the development of an EU digital financial ecosystem, guarantee a level playing field and protect the digital sovereignty of consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n In related news, PYMNTS wrote last week about the \u201cintense police debate\u201d around consumer data access connected to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau\u2019s 1033 rule<\/a>, which governs open banking.<\/p>\n \u201cThese debates will dominate regulatory meetings and congressional hearings in the months ahead,\u201d that report said. \u201cKey disagreements over data privacy<\/a>, access scope, competitive fairness and the practical burdens for innovators are already shaping the course for open banking in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n Taking part in the debate are banking trade groups, who issued a statement in July arguing that without \u201cthe ability to obtain consumer data securely, aggregators\u2019 and FinTechs\u2019 business models would be significantly undermined.\u201d<\/p>\n That statement came in response to the American FinTech Council\u2019s letter to President Donald Trump days earlier.<\/p>\n