The nonprofit standards body Financial Data Exchange (FDX) released an update to its API today, adding support for two-way data sharing between data providers and third-party fintechs, as well more consumer control of where data is shared.

FDX is looking to standardize financial data sharing as U.S. financial institutions continue to adopt open banking. Open banking allows third-party vendors to access data collected by banks and financial institutions using APIs, and the standards developed by members of FDX aim to facilitate the movement of data in a uniformly permissioned way.

This is the first major release of the API since early 2020, said FDX Managing Director Don Cardinal.

“FDX API 5.0 is not only increasing efficiency and ease of use across the open finance and open banking landscape, but we have made huge strides on global interoperablity with this release,” Cardinal said in a release.

The update incorporates four new components:

1. Data sharing. Data has traditionally been one-way, with users sharing their financial data from a bank or brokerage with a third-party data recipient typically a fintech application or service and usually through a data access platform. Now data can flow both ways, from fintechs and data aggregators. One use case for this is providing banks and brokerages with information about potential fraud.
2. Consumer control. FDX updated its user experience guidelines to include advice for implementing consumer dashboards so consumers can control their financial data sharing.
3. Standardized consent. The Consent API supports consent traceability and transparency so that user consent can be uniformly read and understood by all parties involved in user-permissioned data sharing, according to FDX. In addition, end user notification of the consent grant will provide consistent communication to consumers about what data they’ve consented to share.
4. Updated security profile. The API security profile references and supports use of the Open ID Foundation’s financial-grade API (FAPI) security standard for securing traffic to APIs and for the authentication of end users. It also aligns with the insurance industry’s Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD) standards body.

The free, open API has 22 million consumer accounts using it at a rate of 2 billion API calls per month, according to an August survey by the organization.

FDX members include big banks like Citi, Chase and Bank of America, core provider Jack Henry, and fintechs like Plaid, Blend and PayPal.