Op-Ed: Without Oversight, Open Banking Is Putting Georgia Families at Risk

By State Representative Billy Mitchell

When I review financial legislation as a member of Georgia’s Banks and Banking Committee, I always start with one question: does this protect consumers or expose them to harm? Right now, the lack of comprehensive oversight in open banking is doing the latter, placing Georgia families at unnecessary risk while enriching corporations that operate in the shadows.

The issue lies with data aggregators, third-party companies that connect popular financial apps to personal bank accounts. Most Georgians using Venmo, budgeting tools, or investment platforms have no idea these intermediaries even exist, much less that they’ve built multibillion-dollar businesses around harvesting and monetizing personal financial information.
Here’s how it works. When consumers authorize the use of their data on financial apps, they believe they’re granting limited access so the app can function. Instead, aggregators often use that permission to pull financial records continuously, sometimes hundreds of times a month, whether or not the consumer is actively using the service. That's surveillance on a scale most people would never knowingly consent to.

And the implications go far beyond privacy. Banking industry data shows that transactions routed through certain aggregators experience fraud rates nearly 70 percent higher than direct bank transactions. Each additional handoff of data multiplies security risks. When fraud happens, it’s working families in Stone Mountain, Tucker, and Lithonia who pay the price—with frozen accounts, disputed charges, and the stress of recovering compromised funds.
For underserved communities that have long faced barriers to wealth building, these risks cut even deeper. Financial security remains fragile for many Georgia families still working to close generational wealth gaps. Predatory data practices, breaches, and the resale of private financial information only widen those divides. We cannot allow an unregulated industry to undermine the progress our communities have fought to achieve.

I’ve seen firsthand how policies that ignore vulnerable populations can have devastating unintended consequences. Open banking without strong consumer safeguards follows that same pattern. What appears to be financial innovation can quickly become another system where marginalized communities shoulder the greatest risks.
The path forward is clear and it starts with federal action. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has begun a rulemaking process to regulate open banking, creating a long-overdue opportunity to put consumers back in control of their own data. Congress must ensure that the CFPB finalizes a rule that prioritizes consumers over corporate data collection and reflects the realities facing families here in Georgia.

Strong rules would require aggregators to obtain meaningful, informed consent before accessing accounts and to end access immediately when that consent is withdrawn. Consumers deserve plain-language explanations about what data is collected, how often it’s accessed, and how it will be used. Buried disclosures in fine print do not count as transparency.
Companies must also be prohibited from using financial data for any purpose beyond what the consumer explicitly authorizes. And those holding sensitive financial information should face enforceable security standards with real consequences when they fail to protect the data entrusted to them.
I urge the CFPB and Congress to act decisively in establishing these protections. Georgia families shouldn’t have to sacrifice their privacy for the convenience of modern technology. We must get this right before more consumers pay the price for inaction.