Op-Ed: Parents deserve open banking without extra fees

By Alleigh Marré | American Parents Coalition
The Center Square

Every parent makes hundreds of decisions each day to keep family life moving. Paying for the things your family needs shouldn’t be one of the hard ones. Whether you’re buying lemonade from the neighborhood kids, splitting a beach house with family or friends, or setting up autopay for swim team fees and guitar lessons, technology has made those moments simple. But that convenience could soon become more expensive.

The budgeting apps, payment services, and savings tools many families rely on only work because parents can securely give them permission to access their own financial information. A little-known part of federal law, often referred to as open banking, protects that right. But the big banks are pushing hard for a new rule that would allow them to start charging fees for that access. Those new costs are likely to ripple through the system, making the apps families use every day more costly.

Under the leadership of its CEO Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase has already indicated it plans to charge data aggregators for this type of access. Those costs could eventually be passed on to consumers. Instead of working to find ways to help families make things more convenient and affordable, the big banks are focused on extracting yet another fee that will be passed straight onto our families.

Parents should be able to decide how their own financial information is used without facing new fees simply because they’ve chosen to connect a budgeting or payment app. Your personal data isn’t JPMorgan’s property to cash in on. When you authorize a budgeting app to read your checking account so you can track how much you’re spending on groceries, or when you connect a savings app that rounds up your purchases to build a college fund, you are exercising ownership over your own data. Why should a bank force you to pay a fee for access to something that is yours to begin with?

For many families, these apps are part of the monthly routine. They’re how parents check whether payday has hit before buying groceries, split childcare costs with grandparents, send money for a school fundraiser, keep track of sports registration fees, save a few dollars each week for emergencies, or automatically move money into a college fund. They help families avoid overdraft fees, stay on budget, and stretch every paycheck a little further.

If CEOs like Jamie Dimon are allowed to arbitrarily increase costs for using these apps, transactions will become a financial burden for parents as everyday purchases become more expensive.

Open banking gives families more control over their own financial information and lets them choose the tools that work best for their budgets. The Trump Administration should finalize a rule that protects that choice without allowing new fees from big banks like JPMorgan Chase that make managing household finances more expensive.

That’s why parents deserve real open banking without extra fees or extra worries and the ability to make decisions easy for their families.