Ep. 118 - Consent Is the Currency: Who Wins in the Open Finance Economy? - with Mastercard Open Finance

Jess Turner (0:00)

70% of consumers say they'll switch financial institutions if the digital experience isn't good. That's a big percentage, especially to switch a financial institution because it's not easy to do. I always believed as the world evolved, people would come very quickly and they would only have one option. And the truth is that that's not the case, the way people make payments for purpose. They want choice. It's typically not technology, right? Humans always have to be at the heart of the design. There's not a consumer in the world who's gonna sit down and talk about what they did in the open finance that day. I can promise you that. What they are gonna talk about is what they're doing and what solution you're solving for them. What are you making better for them? I think in three years, there'll be far more use cases. Consumers will get so used to this hyper-personalization that their wealth information, their financial information will really be a cornerstone to personalize things far beyond just those use cases that are sitting in front of us. I would say if it's not doing that in three years, I think as an industry, we've let the world out.

Kara Parkey (1:01)

Welcome back to The Payments Shed. I'm Kara Parkey and today we're diving into a corner of FinTech that touches data, trust, consumer control, and a very important moment in financial services. Our guest today is Jess Turner, who runs Open Finance Globally for Mastercard. Thanks for joining us.

Jess Turner (1:16)

Thank you for having me.

Kara Parkey (1:17)

I appreciate it.

Jess Turner (1:18)

I'm excited to be here.

Kara Parkey (1:19)

Yeah, glad to have you. So, let's jump right in. Open Finance is often framed as a technology shift when in reality this comes down to something much more fundamental, which is when a consumer says yes.

So, you've had a front-row seat to all of this, have been at Mastercard for around 20 years across very different roles. So, maybe talk to us about how the ecosystem works and what's changed.

Jess Turner (1:40)

For sure. So, I'll stop off by saying Open Finance, Open Banking is really just about sharing data, which in my view is something that's been happening for a long time, even before digitization. What I really think the shift is, is doing it in a way that's a lot easier for consumers.

Small businesses, even large corporate businesses, and making that data more easily exchangeable, and doing it for things that truly matter, enhance people's lives. And so, that's been the biggest shift. I think being at Mastercard for so long, I've had up to 14 different roles doing very, very different things. But even in the world of payments and banking and money movement, it really is about messaging and data. And so, it's just taking that really to the next level and doing it with the same trust and security you would expect from other things you do every day.

Kara Parkey (2:29)

Yeah. So, you mentioned a number of different roles. You've gone from cards, data, now you're leading open finance. Was this always kind of the direction of travel or, you know, how has it shifted over the past 20 years?

Jess Turner (2:40)

Well, to be totally transparent, I started in data. I started after college at Capital One doing data analysis. I consider myself fairly analytical. And I love data and I love technology because it tells stories and it enables things for people and businesses and companies. And so what I would say is, no, I didn't ever envision that I'd be leading the open banking, open finance and development experience team at Mastercard when I was a little girl. That wasn't always on my, what are you going to view when you grow up? But my career has really progressed in ways because I have a passion for it. And because you can see how it does things in so many different ways. And I think we're just getting started.

The wave of digitization was a big unlock.

And now in this new world with AI and really the agentic evolution, there's another massive unlock. And then we can keep going as we see other evolutions coming like quantum computing, etc. So I feel like I was born at the right time to be in this multi-generational journey, if you will, with data.

Kara Parkey (3:42)

Makes sense. And you mentioned, this might be your answer, but you mentioned that we've actually been doing sharing data for 20 years, we're just making it a lot easier. When you look back at the last 20 years, what do you think has actually changed? Or what do you think just gets rebranded every three to five years? Is it, what is the most major shift?