Open Banking Platforms: Value, Trust, and Governance

Maha Ibrahim1,* Durdona Davletova1

1 Tashkent State University of Economics, Uzbekistan

Received: March 12, 2025 Revised: May 10, 2025 Accepted: August 17, 2025 ⋆ Corresponding author

ABSTRACT

Open banking is moving beyond being a access technology for regulators to a platform infrastructure for financialsector

transformation. However, having APIs alone does not mean there is any innovation, competition, or customer

value. This integrative review brings together a set of 26 peer-reviewed studies that are available by 31 March 2025,

which span four intertwined areas of research related to platform architecture, value creation, consumer trust and

inclusion, and ecosystem governance. The evidence shows that the benefits of permissioned data mobility can help

to alleviate information friction, and enable modular services, but can only be realised if interfaces are reliable,

complementors are capable, consent is intelligible, there exists liability clarity, and redress is effective. Openness can

widen the competition and personalisation, as well as create third party reliance, cyber vulnerability and exclusion

risks for less digitally competent consumers. To link these insights, a layering of governance is developed and a

four-stage maturity framework is proposed from compliance access to open-finance readiness. It then proposes

research priorities related to sustained adoption, distributional effects, API assurance, interoperability, and system

resiliency. The review does not view open banking in isolation from the other elements of an organization and

institutional change, but rather as a coordinated change, and offers a short and simple framework for researchers,

financial institutions and regulators.

Keywords: Open banking Open finance API platforms Financial digital transformation Platform governance

Data portability Consumer trust

1. INTRODUCTION

Financial digital transformation is more and more structured

via platforms and not via single channel improvements. Mobile

interfaces, cloud infrastructure, advanced analytics and

automated decisions are all crucial but the strategic impact

will rely on the ability to now re-combine data and services

across organisational boundaries. This change is at the heart

of open banking, as once authorised, customers can share

account data and payment capability with authorised third

parties via APIs. The resulting architecture transforms the

bank from being the traditional vertically integrated service

provider, into a participant, orchestrator, or infrastructure

supplier in a multi-sided ecosystem.

This is important for three reasons. First, first, first – Open

banking changes the economics of information. Customerpermissioned

data can alleviate search and screening problems,

facilitate aggregation and comparison and give rise to

more personalized credit and payment services [1, 2]. Second,

it increases the innovation base. Complementors or merger

and acquisition partnerships between banks and FinTech firms

and modular combinations of data, identity, payment, and

advisory services can lead to new offerings [3, 4, 5]. Third, it

reallocates operational and regulatory duties. A service that

is used as a single customer journey might be based on multiple

data holders, API intermediaries, identity providers and

application developers. The failure of any link can undermine

the entire proposition.