RALEIGH – Red Hat is moving to capitalize on the growing interest in “open banking.”

Popular in Europe, “open banking” is where banks allow access and control of customers personal and financial data to third-party service providers. And experts say it has the potential to reshape the market.

Case in point: The Raleigh-based open source giant has teamed up with Helsinki-based fintech company Asiakastieto Group to build its new account information service, Account Insight, on an open banking platform.

The firm uses Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Integration as its foundation for its applications.

“Open banking presents a space for creativity as well as a way to drive business efficiencies, and Asiakastieto has taken the initiative to identify how combining open data sets can unlock new benefits for businesses and society,” said Red Hat’s chief technologist Tim Hooley.

“Making use of Red Hat’s container platform and integration technologies, Asiakastieto has been able to take its innovative idea from concept to application quickly and effectively. We are pleased to have supported Asiakastieto on its open banking journey, the open source way, and look forward to continuing to collaborate.”

Reetta Sinelampi, Asiakastieto’s development director, said Red Hat’s cloud platform provides the infrastructure to its open banking solution, providing the “speed and scope” to innovate.

“We are excited about the solution’s potential to help reduce the level of personal and corporate debt in Nordic societies, which is currently at a record high,” she said. “After the COVID-19 outbreak, we have had more than 10 new creditors integrate with our test environment with plans to roll into production. These financial services customers have an acute need to understand their consumer customers’ liquidity and corporate customers’ cash flow based on bank account data.”

The rise of open banking

For those not in the know, open banking is a practice that provides third-party financial service providers open access to consumer banking, transaction and other financial data from banks and non-bank financial institutions through the use of application programming interfaces (APIs).

And it’s on the rise.

A new study from Juniper Research has found that the total number of Open Banking users (who share data via Open Banking APIs to aggregate their bank accounts and access new services), will double between 2019 and 2021; reaching 40 million in 2021 from 18 million in 2019.

The research found that the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is increasing the need for consumers to aggregate accounts and gain insight into their financial health; boosting momentum in Open Banking adoption.

This growth is being driven by Europe, it noted, where the regulator-led approach to Open Banking has created a standardized market, with low barriers to entry.

“This contrasts with markets like the US, where a lack of central regulatory intervention is limiting growth potential,” Juniper said per its release.