CFPB Open Banking Rewrite Spotlights Data-Access Fees

Banks have argued that maintaining secure APIs and supporting infrastructure imposes significant and ongoing costs. Section 1033 itself does not explicitly ban reasonable cost recovery, they said. FinTechs and data aggregators oppose fees, saying the charges would raise their expenses and potentially slow consumer adoption.

The CFPB requested comment on allowing fees in an August 2025 advance notice of proposed rulemaking. It also sought input on who qualifies as an authorized representative, privacy and cybersecurity protections, and compliance burdens.

According to Bloomberg, a structure that permits fees only after a threshold of free requests could balance consumer access rights against bank demands for compensation. That setup would force data providers to offer some free access – meeting the statutory purpose – while still allowing cost recovery for high-volume requests.

The proposal could reshape commercial relationships. Even amid regulatory uncertainty, banks, lenders, payments providers, payroll companies, FinTechs and data aggregators continue negotiating bilateral data-access agreements covering liability, security, service levels, audit rights and fees.

The CFPB's reconsideration may be more of a recalibration than a retreat from federal open banking, Ballard Spahr noted. The core requirement that data providers develop technical capabilities to share specified information would likely survive, along with obligations on authorized third parties regarding disclosures and data management. The central question: not whether consumers retain the ability to move their data, but who pays for the infrastructure that enables that portability, and under what terms.

No timeline has been set for publication of the proposed rule. The White House review typically takes 60 to 90 days.