Karandaaz hosts banking roundtable

KARACHI: Open banking has the potential to enhance the customer experience and tailor banking services to individual needs, an official at the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said on Thursday.

Sohail Javaad, the executive director for the digital financial services group at the SBP, said open banking was essential to Pakistan's banking advancement, helping the country's banked and unbanked populations equally.

He was speaking at the first roundtable session on open banking with industry participants, organised by Karandaaz Pakistan, a development finance firm that promotes financial inclusion and digital transformation in the country.

Open banking allows users of financial services to access, manage, and leverage their financial data through open banking-enabled applications, to take advantage of better products, price offerings, and services, according to Karandaaz.

Javaad stressed that consent management architecture would be a key component to ensure customer data protection, adding that, since the data is owned by the customer, it necessitates that cost savings and/or revenue generated from open banking will benefit the customer.

He also noted that reciprocity between the different actors within the ecosystem would be a key requirement for open banking.

Sharjeel Murtaza, the director for digital financial services at Karandaaz, said that for open banking to be successful, an absolute consumer-centric approach had to be taken and consumer data should be made portable without compromising its security and privacy.

He added that Karandaaz was committed to supporting the enablement of an open banking ecosystem, as it could directly help lower the barriers to accessing financial services and innovation, building on the success of Raast, Pakistan's instant payment system.