As Canada prepares to move Consumer-Driven Banking from concept into reality, one question is rising to the top of industry discussions: how do you build trust at scale while enabling innovation?
That was the focus of a Powerhouse Debate at Open Banking Expo Canada 2026, where leaders from banking, fintech and infrastructure explored how the ecosystem can support thousands of participants, maintain consumer protection, and unlock the growth promised by Open Banking.
The conversation made one thing clear. The technology may be ready, but trust frameworks will determine whether the system succeeds.
Trust must scale with the ecosystem
As the ecosystem expands, accreditation and oversight will become central to maintaining confidence.
Abraham Tachjian, chief regulatory affairs officer at Brim Financial
Abraham Tachjian, chief regulatory affairs officer at Brim Financial, emphasised that Canada’s approach has always been rooted in consumer empowerment, rather than market correction.
He pointed to early policy discussions dating back to 2017, when Open Banking first appeared in federal consultations, highlighting that the objective from the beginning was enabling consumers to control their financial data.
That focus shaped the framework’s core pillars, including accreditation, security requirements and liability rules designed to balance competition with innovation.
“Looking at the policy objectives of what we were trying to accomplish and building around that by keeping the consumer… empowerment in mind, we built the foundation of what eventually became the legislation that we have today,” Tachjian explained.
The challenge now is ensuring those frameworks can operate effectively when participation expands beyond traditional financial institutions.
Accreditation and oversight will define trust
For the system to work, regulators must support potentially thousands of new participants, ranging from fintech startups to global payment providers.
Eyal Sivan, general manager for North America at Ozone API, said Canada has historically prioritised safety and soundness in its financial system, which has shaped the design of its Consumer-Driven Banking framework.
Early discussions were heavily focused on risk reduction, including addressing vulnerabilities created by screen scraping. Now, the industry is shifting toward enabling innovation and competition.
That shift will require clear operational frameworks, particularly around third-party risk management, monitoring ecosystem participants and ensuring they meet security and compliance requirements.
“When you’re creating an ecosystem based on an open standard where there’s a whole bunch of new players coming along, trying to build amazing things and work together, how do you know you can trust them?” Sivan said. “Do they have appropriate redress if something goes wrong?”
Panel moderator Jim Wadsworth, chief revenue officer at Invela, talked about the importance of providing clarity on liability and where the customer goes to get appropriate levels of redress.
“If it’s not clear, then you end up with an ecosystem in difficulties because if multiple consumers have multiple bad experiences and are left, that doesn’t work either. So ,it’s an important balancing act. Trust is easy to lose if there isn’t appropriate protection at that point.”
The consumer perspective
While much of the debate focused on regulation and infrastructure, panellists agreed the ultimate test of Consumer-Driven Banking will be consumer confidence.
Heather Davis, senior director of innovation at CIBC, said protecting customers must remain central as the ecosystem evolves.
She emphasised that building trust will require collaboration across the entire ecosystem, including banks, fintechs, regulators and consumer protection agencies.
Explaining how data sharing works, how consent can be revoked, and how consumers remain protected will be critical.
“I do really think it’s going to be incumbent on all participating entities, as you get various entities interacting with the client, to make sure that they’re explaining… what they’re consenting to, how your data is going to be used. That’s going to be on all of us as we think about the ecosystem,” she said.
At the same time, panellists acknowledged that consumers may not be focused on the concept of Open Banking itself. Instead, they will adopt the services that deliver tangible value, given that consumers care about outcomes, not infrastructure.
Adoption will follow value
Adriana Vega, chief executive officer of Fintechs Canada
Adriana Vega, chief executive officer of Fintechs Canada, argued that demand for Open Banking-enabled services already exists.
Millions of Canadians currently share financial data through screen scraping to access financial apps and services, demonstrating that consumers are willing to share data when the benefits are clear.
“The consumer is not a passive actor in this space. They’re actually engaging in these solutions because it’s resolving a problem, right? And that is how innovation generally comes to be. There’s a problem and there’s a solution and it gets picked up and it just grows in scale,” Vega added.
Execution is the next challenge
As Canada enters what many describe as its “build phase” for Consumer-Driven Banking, the focus is shifting from policy design to implementation.
Panellists agreed that the next 12 months will be critical.
Industry needs clarity on standards, accreditation frameworks and monitoring systems so that participants can begin building real services.
With Consumer-Driven Banking developing alongside the Real-Time Rail and other innovations in payments infrastructure, such as stablecoins, Canada has the chance to design a more integrated financial ecosystem than many other markets that launched these systems separately.
But delivering that vision will require coordination across regulators, financial institutions and fintechs.
The framework may provide the foundations, but the success of Consumer-Driven Banking will ultimately depend on how effectively the ecosystem can build trust, innovation and scale together.
Brim Financial’s Tachjian called for “patience”.
“My wish is that we don’t lose confidence in a system that, although we’ve been waiting for a long time, we’ve dedicated tremendous industry and government resources and building, but we’ve built it as a first step,” he said.
Further reading: Mobilizing Open Banking: Industry leaders debate whether Canada is finally building at scale