Following a successful start in Colombia, Open Banking Exchange launched operations in Mexico with a ground-breaking summit featuring insights from Banco de México, Banorte, Belvo, Citibanamex, CNBV, Mastercard, Nubank, Prometeo and a range of fintechs and service providers. 

It has been three years since open banking became a reality in Mexico with the Fintech Law of 2018. Since then, thousands of institutions – including regulators, banks, fintechs, insurance and pension providers – have been impacted. Yet Mexico is still near the beginning of this journey, and the scale of the transformation ahead will require careful planning. When so many actors are involved, fragmentation and misunderstanding can become rife. 

It is with this in mind that Open Banking Exchange (OBE) launched operations in Mexico. OBE is active across the world helping countries implement open banking and open finance. Created initially to enable the ecosystem get to grips with PSD2 regulation, OBE in Europe (Open Banking Europe), was pivotal to the successful rollout of European open banking through creating standards, security models and TPP business processes.  

John Broxis, Managing Director at OBE, expressed how pleased OBE is to bring this expertise to Mexico and offer an exclusive membership program with working groups, webinars and resources to help market players exchange ideas and concerns and build solutions.   

The regulatory view 

Dr. Irene Espinosa, Deputy Governor at Banco de México, spoke first about how Banxico is prioritising financial inclusion, as well as the importance of the role of OBE in promoting discussions and establishing forums for debate.   

Jose Antonio Quesada, the Vice President of Regulatory Policy at Comisión Nacional Bancaria y de Valores (CNBV), introduced the perspective of the supervisor and described the long-term strategy of the regulators. This will be a phased approach which will eventually incorporate all open finance, standardising the exchange of open, aggregated, and transactional data.  

Rory O’Kane, HM Consul and Deputy Director of DIT Mexico, spoke about the role of the embassy and how the UK government is prioritizing open finance in Mexico 

A vibrant ecosystem of banks, fintechs and service providers  

OBE was pleased to welcome several major Mexican banks, innovative fintechs and ecosystem providers who spoke at the summit. 

Esteban Dominguez, Head of Fintech Partnerships and Open Banking at Citibanamex, talked about the ability of open finance to build better products and enable improved communication channels with customers.  

Banking-as-a-Service and Banking-as-a-Lifestyle were highlighted as the end goals of Banorte’s long-term open finance strategy, according to Juan Daniel López, Deputy Director of Digital Banking. Cesar Espinoza, VP Real Time Payments & Open Banking at Mastercard, gave an insightful summary on how Mastercard is redefining its role and participating in the modernisation of the financial sector. Pablo Viguera, CEO and Co-founder of Belvo, and Emilio González, Director General of Nu México, both gave fascinating talks on the state of Mexico’s market and the challenge of standardising different data schemes. 

As one of the leading open banking platforms in the region, Prometeo provided an important perspective on how open banking can overturn the current, unsatisfactory structure of financial services and enable financial inclusion and a competitive, transparent market. 

By instigating these dialogues and enabling institutions to connect with different segments of the market, OBE is pivotal in bringing the open banking community together. This will enable the streamlined and successful implementation of open banking and open finance in the region. 

Final thoughts 

Mexico has been identified as an attractive market opportunity and OBE was delighted to welcome the regulators, banks and fintechs to the Mexico launch summit.  

Collaboration will be key as Mexico advances, and OBE is ready to help market players through the challenge and provide a platform to link and unite them under one vision of an open, inclusive and innovative financial system. 

To join our community, email latam@openbanking.exchange and become an Open Banking Exchange member today.