To make open banking work the way it is meant to, you need three major building blocks; data exchange, payments and digital ID. While many countries are working on these pieces, there is really only one place that has already built them all, into a fully-integrated, cohesive whole, at population scale: India. In the season four finale of Mr. Open Banking, Eyal sits down with Dr. Pramod Varma to discuss the uniquely successful digital transformation of India. Pramod is the Chief Architect behind a set of national systems known collectively as the India Stack, widely considered one of the most s ..read more

Europe, widely considered the birthplace of open banking, has been on a journey to digitize their financial system for over 20 years. In this episode, we speak to a guest who has been on that road since the beginning, at the nexus of finance, technology and regulation. Dr. Ruth Wandöfer has been instrumental in shaping the future of finance in Europe, having positioned herself as one of the leading experts in the region. She is a  widely sought after speaker, writer and professor, with her opinions published in Sifted, The Financial Times and Forbes. She has published three books on digit ..read more

What defines the value of a thing? Is it a question of utility, aesthetics, rarity, emotional connection, or a combination of all these aspects? When it comes to digital assets, this question becomes even more complex, as evidenced by the rise and subsequent fall of NFTs. Beyond just digital, The continued evolution of Web3 and DeFi has now set the physical world and the digital world on a collision course, changing perceptions of ownership, trade and value. To dig deeper into the philosophical question of digital value and its impact on the physical world, Eyal turns to Bianca Lopes, economis ..read more

Data fuels our digital lives, helping us make decisions, build relationships, and stay organized. To achieve these goals, we willingly share our personal data with various service providers, who give us search engines, social networks and e-commerce. But somewhere in the bargain, those providers encroached far beyond what the typical user understood. Our personal information, what makes us us, wasn’t just given, it was taken, in a way that makes it very hard to get back. To unpack this asymmetry and discuss a way forward, Eyal sits down with Liz Brandt, Co-Founder and CEO of Ctrl-Shift, a stra ..read more

For most people, wallets are a staple accessory of their everyday lives. Yet today, the analog wallet is disappearing, to be replaced, like so many other things, by its digital twin. Digital wallets are now a reality and, like their physical predecessors, they will become an intrinsic part of our lives, so making sure they are built the right way is critical. To discuss the future of digital wallets, Eyal turns to Daniel Goldscheider, Founder of the OpenWallet Foundation, an organization dedicated to enabling a trusted digital future through interoperability for a wide range of use cases that ..read more

Open banking is often cast as an antidote to the dominance of big banks. Given that its origins stem from the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, this perspective is not terribly surprising. But is this characterisation a fair one? Does open banking have to be a threat to big banks, or can it be turned into an opportunity? To answer these questions and more, we turn to Paul LaRusso. Paul is a business leader with over 20 years of experience in mobile financial services and technology. Paul is the CEO of Akoya, a bank-sanctioned data access network that is leading the way in the US open finance sec ..read more

In the extended season finale of Mr. Open Banking, Eyal directly tackles the question of how open banking will change the way we interact with our money, in an attempt to build a vision of the open future. To do so, he breaks the problem down into the three core concepts at the heart of that claim: money, identity and open banking. When it comes to exploring the interplay between digital money and digital identity, one would be hard-pressed to find someone more knowledgeable than his guest, David G.W. Birch. An internationally-recognised author, advisor and commentator on digital financial ser ..read more

As the open banking movement continues to unfold, many people are asking an obvious but entirely valid question: can we trust open banking? In this episode, Eyal explores the concept of trust in open banking, and how we can learn to trust the data sharing ecosystem upon which open banking is being built. To inform the discussion, he sits down with Ralph Bragg, the Co-Founder and CTO of Raidiam, a company that’s on a mission to create the world’s smartest, most trustworthy data sharing ecosystems. As an internationally-renowned expert in open banking technical standards and trust frameworks, Ra ..read more

When it comes to open banking globally, there are several factors that have acted as drivers for the movement, like competition, inclusion, stability and innovation. Although innovation takes a back seat in some regions, there is one place where it is firmly front-and-center: the Middle East. The Middle East and North Africa, a region known by the acronym MENA, has embarked on its own open banking journey, where Bahrain, Oman, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Israel and Egypt have all introduced some form of open banking initiatives. While they may vary in scope and approach, they all hav ..read more

Open banking definitions often differ from region to region. In the U.S., where open banking is decidedly market-driven, it is associated more with consent-driven data sharing, rather than standardization or regulation. Outside of regulatory constraints, U.S. open banking efforts are laser-focused on generating business value through true innovation. In this episode, Eyal sits down with Jane Barratt, the Chief Advocacy Officer at MX, one of the American leaders in account aggregation and a true fintech powerhouse. With over two decades of experience in the world of financial services, Jane has ..read more