European Third Party Providers Association urges EU policymakers to retain the Financial Data Access Regulation and refocus it on customer data access rights

The European Third Party Providers Association, alongside other European fintech trade bodies, sent a letter to European Commissioner Maria Luís Albuquerque, European Parliament rapporteur Johan Van Overtveldt and Poland’s finance undersecretary Jurand Drop supporting the European Commission’s proposed Regulation on Financial Data Access (FIDA) and opposing calls to withdraw it during negotiations. The group argues that moving from open banking under the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) to open finance under FIDA should preserve existing data-driven services already delivered under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by fintechs, third party providers (TPPs) and financial information service providers (FISPs). As targeted adjustments for trilogue, the signatories call for a more customer-centric approach that grants online access to all data categories already available to customers in paper or other forms, without differentiating between consumers and businesses. They also propose limiting prescriptive rules on industry schemes in favour of self-regulation, with regulatory intervention only if the market fails, and requiring all financial data holders to provide at least one always-available online or mobile customer interface, preferably API-based, so customers can access data continuously themselves or mandate an authorised third party. The letter further urges clearer language distinguishing customer “data re-use” enabled by “data access” from “data sharing”, framing confidentiality as compatible with value-added services. The recommendations are presented as inputs for trilogue negotiations, and the group asks recipients to consider the changes and respond.