The peak body for Australian fintechs has released a new submission outlining its vision for open banking ahead of its official launch date later this year.
Following widespread concern that without improved consumer understanding, the open banking system is unlikely to deliver on radical expectations, FinTech Australia has suggested a rethought approach it sees as being the most likely to materially increase awareness.
The group feels that there is a responsibility to educate Australians not only on a macro government or regulator level, but also across individual organisations.
“We see considerable benefits for consumers from a security, service quality and price perspective. However, consumers and consumer groups appear to be reluctant to embrace these benefits,” the group's submission reads.
“A broad education campaign may have merit, but would also need to be coupled with active participation and engagement by the existing data holders.
“These organisations have the capacity to greatly influence their customer base in favour of, or against, any new services built upon the CDR. Any education campaign should be targeted at a small number of extant concrete use cases.”
The group also communicated that to be effective, the information needs to be easily accessible, and as such it recommended a “user-friendly, crisp and compact website” similar to the Moneysmart page run by the government.
According to FinTech Australia, the education material also needs to stress that consumers remain in control of how their personal information is used in order to provide confidence to the customers who remain reluctant to engage in the digital economy.
