(5 August 2025 – United States) Fintechs claim that incurring a fee to access client data held by financial institutions (FIs) such as JPMorgan would threaten their business model.
JPMorgan has alarmed start-ups and challenger brands with plans to charge them to access its customer data, a move that could endanger their business models and is seen by some as bare faced machinations to wipe out new entrants by JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon.
Other banks could follow JPMorgan’s lead in charging Fintechs for access to API data as the global heavyweight startles Fintechs with well advanced plans to charge for access to customer data. PNC, the ninth-largest US lender by assets, is also considering levying similar charges. JPMorgan’s fees could commence as early September however the group is negotiating with individual Fintechs that could alter the timeline and premiums.
The largest US bank by assets distributed price sheets to start-ups that have long relied on free API access to bank consumer data to underpin their services. This includes data aggregators such as Plaid that have grown rapidly as a direct result of the prevailing free data-sharing model. The dispute highlights the intimate interconnected nature of banks and non-bank enterprises in delivering financial services in a digital world, and the cost of sharing data between the two sides via APIs.
“JPMorgan’s action is a pure and simple attempt to kill competition that will put third parties out of business altogether. Across all the companies that received the notices, the cost of just accessing JPM data is somewhere from 60 percent and in some cases well over 100 percent of their annual revenue for the year – just from one bank” commented Financial Data and Technology Association Executive Director, Steve Boms, a trade group representing over 30 aggregators and Fintechs such as Plaid, Fiserv and Intuit.
“We have explicitly reserved the right to charge a fee for data access since day one of our agreements. Having a charging structure will ensure that data is provided only when customers request it, and that data middlemen are fostering a safe, secure data ecosystem that we built and maintain, and that their entire industry was built upon” a JPMorgan spokesperson said in a statement.