Open banking, which just a few years ago was seen as a bold regulatory experiment, is becoming a mature commercial infrastructure in 2026 and simultaneously evolving into a broader concept: open finance.
Artem Lyashanov examines the differences between these concepts and the data supporting the market’s transition to the next level, drawing on international research without evaluating individual companies or jurisdictions.
From Open Banking to Open Finance
Financial data sharing is moving beyond open banking and into a broader, more connected era known as open finance, a shift that is changing how people can access, use, and benefit from their financial information.
While open banking primarily concerned bank account data, open finance encompasses investments, insurance, pension savings, and other financial products in a single space.
The main practical consequence is that users no longer need to manually collect statements and reports from various sources. Open finance allows consumers and businesses to instantly and securely connect their financial data to the service of their choice for a personalized and automated financial experience.
How fast is adoption growing?
The pace of adoption is already measurable. Over 100 million Americans have already granted third-party access to their financial data in exchange for better services, and according to a global study by Mastercard, 76% of consumers directly link their financial accounts to tools that help them manage their tasks.
Regulatory maturity varies across countries, but the trend is common. Among the global leaders is the United Kingdom, where the development of an open finance infrastructure began back in 2016. The country created a dedicated body for open banking implementation and launched the first projects in 2018, making it a benchmark for other markets gradually building their own models.
What does this mean for the market and business?
The transition to open finance is accompanied by the commercial maturity of the infrastructure itself. Open APIs are transforming from a regulatory requirement into a paid, monetizable resource.
This has several practical implications for businesses:
- Access to data is becoming not just a technical issue, but a commercial one with its own economics;
- Built-in financial services (loans, payments, insurance) are increasingly being integrated directly into non-financial platforms;
- Competitive advantages accrue to companies that build partnerships with banks early, rather than connecting to an existing infrastructure later.
According to analysts, the economic impact of open finance technologies in certain markets could reach hundreds of billions of rubles per year in the coming years, with the greatest gains coming from companies that are able to build commercially successful models based on open data. The transition from open banking to open finance is an expansion of scale.
