- 1Dimon said fees reflect API costs and that banks should not bear liability when customers hand credentials to third parties.
- 2He wants sharing to be time-limited and barred from resale or remarketing.
- 3The American Fintech Council says restricting or monetizing consumer-permissioned data threatens competition.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon used the bank's latest quarterly earnings call to defend a plan to charge fintechs for access to customer bank account data, calling it a customer-protection measure. Bloomberg News had revealed the plan before the call.
Dimon's case
Dimon said customers have the right to share their information, but that they should know exactly what is being shared. In his telling, sharing should cover what the customer wants, carry a time limit because some arrangements ran for years, and prohibit remarketing or resale to third parties. He said JPMorgan supports data sharing "done properly."
Payment, he said, reflects the substantial cost of setting up APIs and running system protection. He also raised a liability shift: JPMorgan should not be responsible when customers give their bank credentials to third parties that market and do other things with them and the customer is then scammed or defrauded. Dimon argued that many scams run through third-party social media and that those parties should carry more responsibility.
Pushback from fintech
The American Fintech Council (AFC) rejected the framing, saying the move would do the opposite of protecting consumers and would hurt both consumers and borrowers. AFC CEO Phil Goldfeder said restricting or monetizing access to consumer-permissioned financial information is a direct threat to responsible innovation, healthy competition and progress toward a more inclusive financial system.
Consumers have a right to their own financial data, full stop.
A fight Dimon flagged earlier
Dimon had signaled the conflict months earlier in a shareholder letter, writing that it was time for banks to defend themselves "in the public realm or in court if need be" as third parties seek full access to customer data for their own profit.
Source reporting: deBanked.
