The US bank has agreed paid data-access terms with Plaid, Yodlee, Morningstar and Akoya, in a move that could reset the economics of open banking in the US just as regulators row back on plans for a uniform data-sharing regime.
JPMorgan Chase has reached agreements with some of the largest data aggregators which will see fintechs pay for access to customer bank account data, in a development that could accelerate the commercialisation of open banking in the US.
According to CNBC, the bank has struck updated contracts with Plaid, Yodlee, Morningstar and Akoya, the intermediaries responsible for more than 95% of the data requests made by third-party apps connected to JPMorgan customer accounts.
Drew Pusateri, spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase, said the bank had now reached terms with the major aggregators after a period of negotiation.
“We’ve come to agreements that will make the open banking ecosystem safer and more sustainable and allow customers to continue reliably and securely accessing their favorite financial products,” he told CNBC. “The free market worked.”
From “free” access to a priced utility
For years, aggregators such as Plaid and Yodlee have accessed bank systems at no cost when consumers connected budgeting apps, trading platforms or other fintech tools to their accounts. Banks have increasingly argued that this arrangement is unsustainable, both in terms of infrastructure load and the cost of building secure APIs.
JPMorgan had already warned in July that it planned to introduce fees for access to customer data, after internal analysis showed that the vast majority of API calls to its systems were generated by intermediaries rather than by customers conducting transactions. A memo from a JPMorgan systems employee described those calls as “massively taxing our systems”.
The new contracts formalise that shift. While financial terms were not disclosed, CNBC reported JPMorgan ultimately accepted lower pricing than it had initially proposed, while aggregators secured concessions on how data requests would be serviced.
The move follows a series of bilateral data-access agreements between JPMorgan and individual aggregators. In September, the bank and Plaid announced a renewed data access agreement that explicitly included a pricing structure and commitments to improve data connectivity “safely, securely, quickly and consistently into the future”.
“Today’s announcement will ensure that our customers can continue to quickly, safely, and securely access their financial data for years to come and stay connected to the products they rely on every day,” Melissa Feldsher, Head of Consumer Payments at JPMorgan Chase, said at the time.
Plaid COO Eric Sager framed that deal as a continuation of consumer data rights: “This extended agreement ensures ongoing access for the millions of Chase customers who rely on Plaid every day to connect with the products and services they trust.” JPMorgan Chase
Regulation on ice, bilateral deals in charge
The timing of JPMorgan’s new fee arrangements is significant given the regulatory backdrop.
In October 2024, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finalised its long-awaited Personal Financial Data Rights rule under Section 1033 of Dodd-Frank, designed to guarantee consumers the right to access and share their financial data with authorised third parties at no cost.
Since then, the rule has been dragged into a protracted legal and political battle. Banking trade groups sued to block it, arguing that it exceeded the CFPB’s authority and created security and cost burdens. Under new leadership, the CFPB has signalled it will replace or substantially revise the Biden-era open banking framework, and a federal judge in Kentucky has now temporarily blocked the rule while that process unfolds.
In the meantime, key questions – such as whether banks should be allowed to charge for secure data access, and how those fees should be structured – are effectively being decided by private contracts rather than by regulation. Recent CFPB documents expressly seek industry input on whether “reasonable” fees should be permitted, having previously leaned towards a no-fee model.
That dynamic places the largest US banks, including JPMorgan, in a powerful position to define the commercial terms of open banking through bilateral agreements with aggregators. Critics argue this risks entrenching the power of incumbents and undermining the principle that consumers, rather than institutions, control their financial data.
“Decentralisation sounds sexy, but if we can’t make open banking work with the biggest banks in the world, we’re not ready for the next step,” he said.
Martinho Lucas Pires, Head of Policy Affairs at Portugal Fintech, framed it as a political as much as a technical question: “The question is whether financial data belongs to the institution or to the consumer. Agreements like this signal progress, but they don’t answer that bigger question.”
What changes for fintechs – and ultimately for end users?
For aggregators and the fintechs that sit on top of them, the JPMorgan deals bring both certainty and new costs.
On one hand, locking in pricing and service-level commitments with the largest US bank may help stabilise business models that depend on reliable, permissioned access to customer data. On the other, any increase in the cost of connectivity will have to be absorbed somewhere in the value chain, whether by aggregators, fintechs or end users.
PYMNTS previously reported that fees associated with data access for activities such as account verification or credit underwriting are likely to be passed on to fintechs and potentially to their customers.
For now, the messaging from both JPMorgan and its partners remains focused on continuity rather than disruption. But the underlying shift is clear: as the regulatory push for no-cost open banking stalls, the economics of data access are being renegotiated at the deal table, not in the rulebook.
For payment providers and digital wallets operating in the US market, the JPMorgan agreements will be closely watched as a reference point. If “the free market” continues to work in the way JPMorgan suggests, more large banks may move to monetise their APIs – potentially reshaping the cost base of everything from account-to-account payments to instant credit.
