Presently, 88% of US consumers use fintech services to better manage their financial lives, but many can’t access secure APIs to share data from their financial services providers. When consumers try to share financial data without APIs, they can experience connection delays or failures or access out-of-date information, which severely impedes their ability to access and benefit from the fintech tools they want to use. 

Data exchange in finance has undergone significant transformation, evolving from early practices of credit information sharing to contemporary frameworks such as open banking, open finance, and open data initiatives. Today, approximately 68 countries, representing about 35% of the world's nations, are either implementing or developing these frameworks. Key implementation barriers that has been identified in the recent studies by Deloitte include incentivizing incumbent banks to actively participate in data exchange, fostering a competitive ecosystem for third-party providers, ensuring interoperability across digital infrastructure layers, preventing the formation of data silos, and building trust through transparency and robust governance.

In view of these, we've invited Keith Raphael, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer from Straddle, a very promising open-banking payments platform, that enables organizations to build simpler, faster and more efficient payment flows, based in Denver, Colorado, USA, as he explains to us the value proposition, of the financial data exchange and its significant relevance to our digital economy.

Corporate Website: https://straddle.com

LinkedIn: Keith Raphael

Corporate Email: keith@straddle.com