Open banking data access fees are charges that banks levy on data aggregators and fintechs for retrieving a customer's account data through APIs. In the US this access was historically free. That is changing: in 2025 JPMorgan Chase began charging aggregators such as Plaid, and the CFPB reopened whether fees should be allowed at all under Section 1033. The result is that the economics of data access — not just its availability — are now a live question.
Last reviewed: June 8, 2026
How the fee fight started: JPMorgan vs the aggregators
In mid-2025, JPMorgan Chase said it would start charging data aggregators — the middlemen like Plaid, MX and Finicity that connect fintech apps to bank accounts — for access to customer data. Its argument: serving automated data requests at scale is a genuine infrastructure and security cost, and aggregators had been getting it for free.
The bank put a number on the load. In June 2025 alone it received 1.89 billion data requests from aggregators, and said only about 13% were tied to something the customer actually did in the moment — the rest were background or recurring pulls. A widely circulated Forbes estimate suggested Plaid could face on the order of $300 million in new annual fees under JPMorgan's proposed pricing.
By September 2025, JPMorgan and Plaid had reached a paid data-access agreement. The contracted pricing is undisclosed; people familiar with it described fees as "fractions of a cent per data pull." Plaid has said it will not pass the cost on to its roughly 7,000 clients. The precise numbers matter less than the precedent: the largest US bank established that bulk data access can be a paid service.
The regulatory twist: the CFPB reopened the fee question
The timing is what makes this consequential. The CFPB's 2024 Section 1033 rule had effectively banned data providers from charging consumers or authorized third parties for access — codifying free access as the US norm. But in August 2025, as part of reconsidering the whole rule, the CFPB issued an ANPR that explicitly reopened "the optimal approach to the assessment of fees to defray the costs incurred by a covered person in responding to a customer-driven request."
In other words, the rule that would have made JPMorgan's fees illegal is itself being rewritten — and is currently enjoined. Whether US open banking ends up free-by-rule or fee-bearing is now genuinely undecided. Track the legal state on our Section 1033 status page.
Why this is a deciding variable
- Cost flows downhill. If aggregators pay banks, those costs can eventually surface in aggregator pricing — so your unit economics depend partly on deals you don't control.
- It rewards efficient access. The 13%-customer-initiated figure is a signal: pull only the data you need, when you need it. Wasteful background polling is now something banks measure and price.
- It favors regulated APIs over scraping. Priced, API-based access via FDX is the direction of travel; credential-based screen scraping is being squeezed out.
- The EU contrast matters. Under PSD2 (and the proposed PSD3/PSR), regulated access in Europe is broadly mandated without per-request bank fees — a different model from where the US may be heading.
Frequently asked questions
Data access fees are charges that a bank (the data holder) levies on data aggregators or fintechs for retrieving a customer's account data through APIs. Historically that access was free in the US. Banks now argue that serving billions of automated data requests is a real infrastructure cost and want aggregators to pay for it — turning "access" into a priced commodity rather than a free utility.
Sources
- American Banker — JPMorgan Chase to charge data aggregators for customer data
- American Banker — JPMorgan reaches deal to charge Plaid for customer data
- CNBC — JPMorgan, fintech middlemen, and the 1.89 billion data requests
- Federal Register — Personal Financial Data Rights Reconsideration ANPR (reopens fees)
- CFPB — Personal Financial Data Rights reconsideration (rule under development)