Natasha Cáceres

Open Banking has the potential to change how we decide who deserves credit.

Credit is what keeps the economy moving. A simple way to see it: for every dollar saved in a bank, 81 cents are given to others as loans. We depend on borrowed money more than we realize, which makes how institutions decide to lend it out one of the most consequential decisions in finance.

That decision looks very different depending on where you live. In the United States, your credit score follows you everywhere. It influences whether you get a mortgage, sometimes whether you get a job, and for many people it becomes something they actively manage, taking on debt just to build a number. In most of Europe, the concept barely registers. In my own classrooms in Spain, I’ve asked students about their credit score and been met with blank stares. Here, banks look at your income, your employment history, your savings, and whether your name appears on a default list. Different logic, different data, similar goal.

Open Banking introduces a third option. By requiring banks to securely share customer financial data with authorized third parties, it creates what researchers call a digital financial footprint: your spending patterns, transaction history, recurring payments. That data can tell a more complete story about someone’s financial behavior than a credit score or a payslip ever could. For a young person in the U.S. with no credit history, or someone in Spain who has been self-employed for two years, this could mean access to credit that the traditional system would have denied. Research suggests that using this kind of data leads to higher loan approval rates, lower interest rates, and fewer defaults.

The risks are real and worth taking seriously. When banks share detailed financial data, it can be used against the very people it’s meant to help. A bank can use your spending patterns to offer you a better rate, or to charge you more because it knows you have no alternatives. The data is the same. The intention is not. Privacy protections matter here, not as a legal checkbox, but as a design principle. Done poorly, Open Banking could reinforce existing inequalities rather than reduce them. Done well, it could make the financial system more accurate, more inclusive, and more honest about what creditworthiness actually means.