Enabling cross border open finance systems in Latin America: is consent enough to develop them?

Since 2016, digital finances have been disrupted by the introduction of open banking policies, which would facilitate data sharing in this particular industry. The UK and the EU have led this approach through the adoption of legal rules that enabled data sharing between financial institutions, particularly payment services providers, under users’ permission; lately, this has been slowly expanded into other financial services and called open finance. In this respect, certain Latin American countries have followed this, particularly led by industry efforts. In contrast to the EU, where the Digital Single Market facilitates the necessary conditions for sharing data, Latin America is fragmented in this respect. As such, this permission might be a weak basis for enabling a cross-border open finance ecosystem. This contribution will explore a selected cohort of Latin American countries and assess whether it would be feasible the development of a regional open finance system.