The news: National Bank is the first major Canadian bank to implement a secure data feed (API) for its retail customers to share their financial information with approved fintech applications, per The Logic. This move keeps National Bank ahead of Canada’s plan for a potential 2026 rollout of open banking.

The details: When customers of most Canadian banks want to connect their account to fintech applications, they typically need to give their online banking passwords to third-party aggregators. But through its API, National Bank redirects customers to its own website for identity verification before securely providing data to the fintech. This significantly reduces security risks associated with sharing credentials.

How we got here: To offer this feature, National Bank acquired an 80% stake in financial data aggregator Flinks for $103 million, per The Logic. Flinks now acts as the accreditation body for fintechs wanting to connect to National Bank's API, conducting security screenings before granting access to customer data.