From Open Banking to Open Finance: how data reshapes financial services

Jean Guillaume, CEO of Powens, shares his insights on the evolution of financial services through Open Banking and Open Finance, relevant use cases, and what the future holds in store.

How do you see the shift from Open Banking towards Open Finance and, eventually, Open Data transforming the financial services landscape?

Open Finance and Open Data are already a reality, though unlike PSD2-regulated Open Banking, they largely operate outside formal supervision beyond GDPR.

At Powens, we work across France and Spain, aggregating data from savings, pensions, insurance, and investment accounts, often through web scraping, while maintaining PSD2-level standards for security, consent, and data protection. Government and social-security data are also accessible, though current methods remain less intuitive than a fully regulated framework would allow.

These areas are expanding faster than traditional Open Banking, which has now matured. Financial institutions are among the primary beneficiaries: for example, wealth managers use this data to offer more personalised services and provide higher-quality advice.

Open Finance enhances both the speed and quality of financial information, helping institutions and consumers make more informed decisions.

Which use cases do you expect will gain the most traction and deliver the most value to consumers and businesses?

We see three key growth areas for Open Banking and Open Finance over the next few years.

1. Creditworthiness and credit scoring

The recent DCC2 regulation requires lenders to assess a borrower’s full income and expenses. Traditionally, this was a slow, manual process using PDFs or paper statements. Open Banking enables real-time access to that data, making credit assessments faster and more user-friendly. Lenders in France and Spain are already beginning to automate checks for larger or higher-risk loans, and adoption is set to accelerate with regulatory pressure and digitisation.

2. KYC and fraud management

Open-banking data complements full KYC processes by enabling instant account verification and secure document retrieval, helping prevent fraud. Regtech firms are rapidly integrating these capabilities.

3. Wealth management and personalisation

Real-time Open Finance data allows wealth managers to offer tailored investment advice instead of standardised products. Fintechs are leading this shift, delivering highly personalised services at scale.

Overall, these trends show how Open Finance can streamline processes, enhance security, and enable truly personalised financial services, driving the next wave of growth in the industry.

Embedded Finance reshaped the way companies interact with financial services. How does Open Banking accelerate this trend?

For me, Embedded Finance refers to financial services being delivered outside a customer’s main banking relationship, a long-term trend that’s steadily growing.

Early examples include payment service providers like Stripe. Years ago, merchants had to go through their banks to accept card payments. Then, specialist providers detached payments from traditional banking and embedded them directly into the merchant’s workflow.

Today, we see the same pattern across other industries. Financial services are increasingly integrated into ERPs, accounting software, and other business platforms. These ‘verticalised’ solutions embed payment, reconciliation, and even accounting functions directly into the software businesses already use.

Open Banking and Open Finance are key enablers here. They provide real-time access to financial data – balances, transactions, cash flow – which is critical when delivering services outside a traditional bank context. Many ERP and accounting tech companies, and even some CRM providers, now use Open Banking data via payment initiation services (PIS) or account information services (AIS) to automate payments and accounting processes.

Some of our clients are already doing this, and traditional accounting software providers are beginning to follow. For small and mid-sized businesses, this means faster payments and real-time accounting data instead of waiting for next-day statements.

In short, Open Finance acts as a catalyst for Embedded Finance. It’s not the only factor driving the trend, but it plays a crucial role in enabling seamless, real-time financial services outside the traditional banking relationship.

If you had to predict one major breakthrough or turning point for Open Banking in the next decade, what would it be?

Open Finance and Open Data hold enormous potential, and we’re already seeing steady progress with government, wealth-management, and pension data. With the right regulation, adoption could accelerate, benefiting the entire financial sector.

Looking ahead, one development I hope to see is better harmonisation and accessibility of financial data. Even within Open Banking, aggregating data from different banks is surprisingly complex – subtle differences in transaction lists make it challenging to provide a clean, unified view.

The challenge grows in Open Finance, where wealth management, pensions, and investment products often have different names and descriptions across institutions. This makes it hard for consumers to understand their holdings, compare products, or make informed choices.

Our work focuses on normalising and organising this data to make it more manageable, and regulators are beginning to support similar efforts. Greater harmonisation – through standardised definitions and clearer descriptions – would significantly improve the quality of information available to consumers, advisors, and institutions, supporting better financial decisions. 

This editorial piece was first published in The Paypers' Open Finance Report 2025, the latest comprehensive market overview and analysis focusing on the key players and products within the Open Banking and Open Finance ecosystem. Download the full report to discover more insightful content.

About the interviewee

Jean Guillaume is CEO of Powens, bringing over 15 years of experience in financial services. A graduate of France's École Nationale d'Administration, he has worked at the French Treasury, held leadership roles at Groupe BPCE and Fidor France, and founded Xpollens, a fintech specialising in embedded payments. He now leads Powens with both regulatory insight and an entrepreneurial vision for the future of financial data & payments.

 

 

About the company

Powens is Europe's leading Open Finance platform, serving 290+ banks, fintechs, and platforms across Europe and Latin America. The company combines financial data aggregation from 1,800+ institutions with embedded payment infrastructure – including SEPA payment automation and IBAN issuance – all through a single API. With 13+ years of expertise and EUR 1.4 billion+ transacted annually, Powens enables clients to launch financial services faster and more reliably.