Open Finance: Unlocking Hidden Revenue for Financial Institutions

The financial services landscape is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by the emergence of open banking and open finance. Far from being a mere compliance exercise, open finance is now a powerful competitive differentiator, creating substantial revenue opportunities for forward-thinking institutions while intensifying pressure on those that lag.

Two new industry analyses underscore this pivotal shift: financial institutions embracing open finance as a growth strategy are experiencing tangible revenue gains and gaining a significant competitive edge.

A recent report by Cornerstone Advisors and Ninth Wave highlights six distinct commercial banking revenue streams powered by open banking, ranging from advanced cash flow-based lending to direct fee income from API access. Complementing this, Mastercard’s 2026 State of Open Finance report offers a broader market perspective, revealing that 75% of executives attribute revenue growth directly to open finance initiatives. Intriguingly, companies are estimated to be missing out on an additional 4.6% in annual revenue due to an inability to secure necessary consumer data permissions.

Collectively, these reports paint a clear picture: institutions that excel in building robust data infrastructure and cultivating consumer trust are poised to lead the next era of financial services competition.

Key Insights from Open Finance Evolution:

• Leading open finance adopters are successfully converting connectivity into revenue, moving beyond simple compliance or customer experience enhancements. A majority of global finance executives report direct revenue improvements from open finance initiatives in the past year, a figure that jumps to 84% among those heavily investing in this space.
• The growth of open banking is accelerating dramatically, with API calls projected to reach 722 billion by 2029, a substantial increase from 137 billion in 2025.
• Customers are increasingly willing to switch providers in pursuit of superior data experiences. In the consumer market, 76% would change providers for digital features that simplify financial management, with over half having already done so. Commercial clients exhibit similar behavior, often maintaining relationships with multiple providers.
• Lending, payments, and financial management stand out as the highest-impact use cases for achieving near-term return on investment (ROI).
• Consumer trust remains the critical bottleneck for widespread open finance adoption, with customers withholding data permissions identified as the primary impediment to revenue growth.

Open Banking Revenue: A Proven Reality

The long-standing industry debate regarding open finance’s revenue-generating potential has been definitively settled. Both reports unequivocally demonstrate that open finance is now yielding measurable financial returns, transitioning from theoretical promise to practical impact.

Mastercard’s report quantifies this impact at a macro level, showing that three-quarters of executives have already seen revenue growth from open finance initiatives, averaging a 3.3% uplift across organizations.

Cornerstone’s analysis provides a detailed breakdown of these revenue sources. It moves beyond viewing open banking as a monolithic capability, dissecting monetization into six distinct opportunities, including enhanced lending, streamlined payments, advanced data aggregation, and API-driven fee income.

This combined perspective offers a more precise understanding: revenue isn’t merely stemming from the abstract concept of “open banking.” Instead, it originates from specific, embedded financial data use cases that seamlessly integrate into customers’ daily product interactions.

The significance of this distinction is profound. While Mastercard’s data confirms that many institutions are already realizing financial benefits, Cornerstone’s insights explain why some are outperforming others: they have progressed further in translating fundamental connectivity into concrete, product-level execution.

Three Core Use Cases Delivering Substantial Returns

Despite their differing focal points – commercial monetization versus global market dynamics – both reports converge on the same high-impact open finance use cases:

1. Lending: Cornerstone highlights cash flow-based underwriting as a fundamental paradigm shift, replacing static financial statements with dynamic, real-time transaction data. Mastercard reinforces the strong demand side, indicating that consumers are actively willing to share data specifically to improve loan approvals and secure more favorable terms. The synergy is undeniable: one report identifies the supply (superior underwriting capabilities), while the other highlights the demand (customer willingness to share data for improved outcomes). Together, they point to a near-term growth lever that is both technically feasible and strongly supported by customer needs.
2. Payments: Cornerstone frames payment initiation as a powerful tool to reduce friction and generate transaction-based revenue. Mastercard’s report corroborates that faster, simpler payment experiences are among the leading factors driving customer satisfaction and influencing switching behavior. Again, the pattern holds: operational efficiency on one side meets heightened customer expectations on the other.
3. Financial Management and Aggregation: Cornerstone focuses on monetizing multi-bank visibility and data aggregation services. Concurrently, Mastercard’s findings show that consumers increasingly demand consolidated financial views, personalized insights, and real-time financial guidance. Across both reports, the most successful use cases consistently share three key characteristics: real-time data accessibility, clear and demonstrable customer value, and a direct pathway to revenue generation.

Customer Expectations Are Reshaping the Market

While the Cornerstone report emphasizes market opportunities, the Mastercard report injects a crucial element of urgency, grounded in evolving customer behavior.

Consumers are actively seeking and adopting new financial experiences that deliver the desired use cases. More than three-quarters expressed a willingness to switch providers for better digital features or greater control over their data, and a significant portion has already made such a move.

This consumer behavior directly mirrors the trends Cornerstone identifies on the commercial side. Businesses are increasingly maintaining relationships with multiple financial institutions, frequently turning to specialized fintech providers for specific capabilities like lending or payments.

Crucial Takeaway: Fragmentation is on the rise in both segments, driven primarily by unmet customer expectations. Open finance isn’t just enabling new products; it’s fundamentally redefining how customers evaluate their financial providers. Speed, seamless integration, and personalized relevance are rapidly becoming baseline expectations rather than mere differentiators.

Data Access: The Primary Constraint, Not the Use Case

Both reports pinpoint the identical bottleneck hindering open finance progress: consistent access to usable, properly permissioned data.

Mastercard’s report quantifies this impact, with organizations estimating a loss of 4.6% of potential annual revenue due to an inability to obtain necessary customer permissions. Cornerstone points to the complexity of integration, inconsistent data access, and reliance on fragmented legacy systems as significant barriers to effective execution.

Taken together, it becomes clear that the industry faces a systemic challenge in consistently accessing and operationalizing the data essential for robust open finance innovation.

This is precisely where infrastructure decisions become more critical than product strategy. The reliability of APIs, the standardization of data formats, and the effectiveness of integration models directly dictate how rapidly banks can launch and scale revenue-generating capabilities.

Trust: The Ultimate Deciding Factor

While infrastructure defines what banks are technologically capable of, trust ultimately determines what customers will permit them to do.

The Mastercard report explicitly states that a primary reason organizations fail to capture open finance value is customers withholding data permissions. However, the nuance here is vital.

The majority of customers are not inherently opposed to sharing their data; in fact, 89% are willing in principle. The largest segment simply seeks clarity on how their data will be utilized and what tangible benefits they will receive in return.

This aligns perfectly with Cornerstone’s findings. The most successful commercial use cases – lending, payments, and aggregation – are precisely those where the value exchange is easiest to articulate. Benefits like faster approvals, simpler payments, and consolidated cash views are clear and compelling.

The subtle connection between the two reports highlights the critical need for financial institutions to develop clear, compelling use cases where the value proposition for data sharing is immediately apparent. Banks struggling with consent often find themselves struggling with effective value articulation.

5 Steps to Accelerate Open Finance Value

The combined insights from both reports converge on a focused set of strategic priorities for financial institutions on their open finance journey:

1. Prioritize Use Cases with Direct Revenue Impact: Focus efforts on lending, payments, and financial management, which consistently deliver both strong customer value and measurable financial returns.
2. Integrate Data into Core Workflows: Leverage the speed and context advantages of open finance by ensuring data flows directly into critical systems such as underwriting, payments, and customer engagement platforms.
3. Redesign the Consent Experience: Reframe the consent process to clearly articulate the specific value and benefits consumers will receive in exchange for their data permissions. Customers are more willing to share data when the benefit is clear, immediate, and relevant to their needs.
4. Invest Strategically in API and Data Infrastructure: Treat investments in API reliability, data standardization, and integration models with the same urgency and importance as front-end innovation, as execution speed directly depends on these foundational elements.
5. Cultivate Trust as an Operating Principle: Embed transparency, control, and robust security measures as core operational tenets. These factors directly influence customer willingness to share data, thereby determining the ultimate value banks can create.

Source: thefinancialbrand.com