More than 30 financial services companies have joined to form a working group within Financial Data Exchange (FDX) Canada in its goal of developing a secure, common, flexible and royalty free industry standard for financial data sharing in Canada.

"The launch of FDX Canada proves the success of this industry-led initiative to bring leading organizations in the Canadian financial services ecosystem together around a common financial data sharing standard that will protect consumers and business and simplify their banking experiences" said Don Cardinal, FDX managing director.

Financial services companies join up

The companies joining as initial members of the FDX Canada Working Group include Bank of Montreal, Capital One, CIBC, Desjardins, Equitable Bank, FinTech Growth Syndicate (FGS), Interac Corp., Mastercard, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Simplii Financial, Tangerine Bank, TD Bank Group and Visa. With this milestone, the North American financial industry continues to align around the FDX API, which has been adopted by more than 100 firms and rolled out to about 12 million consumers in the United States.

FDX was organized to empower consumers and small businesses so that they can more readily and securely achieve their financial goals, access capital, manage their finances and improve their financial health. FDX's work and operations are based on five core principles: control, access, transparency, traceability and security.

The FDX Canada Working Group is open to Canadian financial industry participants involved in secure, consumer-directed finance and will work within FDX to help ensure that uniquely Canadian market requirements are accurately reflected in the development and maintenance of the FDX API standard.