EQ Bank Teams With Open Banking Platform Flinks

EQ Bank, part of Canada’s Equitable Bank family, has joined forces with Montreal-based open banking platform Flinks to give EQ Bank customers the ability to share their financial data securely with third-party FinTech apps of their choosing, according to a press release Thursday (July 14).

With this collaboration and the integration of open banking environment Flinks Outbound, the EQ Bank gets the framework to deliver flexible open banking capabilities and launch and operate new application programming interface (API) data sharing methods while providing the bank with improved data management capabilities, the release stated.

EQ customers who provide explicit consent to share their data will have the visibility into what information they are sharing, with whom and for how long, according to the release. Flinks enables the adoption of these APIs by managing the onboarding, accreditation and support.

“Our two companies have long been philosophically aligned in believing that open banking can bring broad benefits to Canadian society,” said Equitable Bank President and CEO Andrew Moor in the release. “We work closely together to engage with government and industry groups to try to bring open banking to life in Canada and are delighted to deliver against that priority and bring innovative services to our customers to give them more control over their financial lives and their data.”

Cathy Ly, vice president of customer experience and digital banking, said in the release that EQ Bank customers have been requesting streamlined data sharing with other financial apps.

“Just as important, however, are those customers who have not asked about data sharing because they are unaware of the benefits that can come from it,” she said in the release.

Last August, National Bank of Canada invested $103 million in Flinks.

Read more: Flinks Gets $103M Jolt From National Bank of Canada