Jack Henry partners with Finicity to empower community FIs with open banking capabilities

By Pavithra R

Jack Henry & Associates, a leading provider of technology solutions and payment processing services primarily for the financial services industry, has announced partnering with Finicity, a Mastercard company.

Under the collaboration, Finicity will be integrated into the Banno Digital Toolkit, to enable community financial institutions in providing consumers with the freedom to control, access, and share their financial data, creating a real-time picture of their financial health. Community financial institutions using the Banno Digital Platform will be able to deliver this holistic financial experience to consumers through secure API access to third-party FIs, FinTechs and financial partners of their choice at zero lift and zero cost.

“At its core, open banking is a philosophy centered on empowering the consumer – as a result, it elevates the position of the financial institution providing the access. Finicity and Jack Henry share a goal of providing the industry with open banking standards that enable consumers to access, use, and benefit from their financial data. As highly regulated and highly connected companies, we’re in a position to help consumers make more informed financial decisions and improve their financial health,” said Steve Smith, Head of Global Open Banking at Mastercard and CEO of Finicity.

Finicity is a founding member of FDX, a nonprofit organization dedicated to unifying the financial industry around a common, interoperable and royalty-free standard for the secure access of consumer-permissioned financial data. Jack Henry has joined FDX to support the standard through this integration with Finicity and throughout more of the Banno Digital Toolkit.

“Jack Henry has a great and longstanding relationship with Mastercard, and partnering with Finicity was a natural choice. The open banking standards that we’re building with partnerships like this will position community financial institutions to deliver a first-app experience for consumers to manage all of their finances. The financial services industry is changing at a rate that no single organization alone can meet, which is why opening a bank or credit union’s digital experience to include all a consumer’s financial connections positions community financial institutions to be the mainstay in a complex and competitive environment,” said Ben Metz, head of digital at Jack Henry.

“We believe banks and credit unions can offer the financial wallet that aggregates all of a consumer’s financial experiences in one place; community financial institutions can be the epicenter of financial transactions. These open banking standards allow them to access consumer data from exterior financial relationships in one place, and then provide personal service in context at the moment of need. This combination is a competitive differentiator that no one else provides,” said Metz.