TD Bank U.S. will let financial apps and data providers connect to the bank through secure APIs run by the data network Akoya, replacing the older practice of customers handing over their bank login credentials. According to PYMNTS, the companies announced the collaboration on Tuesday, Oct. 20, and will begin bringing apps and data aggregators onto the platform in the fourth quarter.
The mechanism is Akoya's Open Finance Solution, or OFS. It supplies the API infrastructure and the operational support that connect a bank to fintechs and data aggregators. For TD clients, the practical change is control: they can let apps access their financial information, see which apps have access, and turn off that access at any time, without ever sharing their login credentials with a third party.
This matters because the plumbing under most banking apps has long been awkward. To understand what changes and for whom, it helps to unpack the terms — and the modest dose of scepticism worth applying to any bank announcement about "secure" connections.
What is open banking, and why does it need APIs?
Open banking is the practice of letting customers share their financial data with apps and services they choose, such as budgeting tools, payment apps, or lending services. The connection has to happen somewhere, and that somewhere is an API — an application programming interface, which is simply a structured way for two computer systems to exchange data on request.
In the older model, an app that wanted a customer's transaction history often collected the customer's actual bank username and password and used them to log in on the customer's behalf. That works, but it hands a credential to a party the bank never vetted, and the bank has no clean way to see or revoke the access. An API-based model reverses that: the bank exposes a controlled data connection, the customer grants and revokes permission at the bank's end, and the password stays put.
The demand side is not hypothetical. A PYMNTS Intelligence report, "Convenience+Security: Key Consumer Findings on Third-Party Financial Data Aggregation," found in 2021 that 80% of third-party financial app users link their bank accounts to those apps, and that 67% of those who do so expect their credentials to be secured against unauthorized access. "Consumers enjoy the convenience of modern-day connected commerce and banking, but they also value security and safety," the report said.
What exactly is Akoya's Open Finance Solution?
Akoya is a data network, and its Open Finance Solution is the product it sells to banks. Per the companies' release, OFS includes two parts: API infrastructure, meaning the technical pipes that carry data between the bank and outside parties, and operational support for connecting financial institutions to fintechs and data aggregators.
A data aggregator, for the uninitiated, is a company that collects financial data from many banks on behalf of many apps, so that an app does not need a separate connection to every institution. Akoya sits in that middle position, but with the bank as the participant rather than the target. For third-party providers, the collaboration offers a consistent way to connect with TD, with connections the release describes as more secure and easier to manage.
That consistency is the part worth watching. A bank that runs one sanctioned data connection has a single place to enforce permissions, monitor traffic, and cut off access. A bank whose customer data flows through dozens of ad hoc screen-scraping arrangements has none.
What does this mean for TD customers?
Three things, according to the release. First, they no longer need to share bank login credentials with third parties to use connected apps. Second, they can see which apps have access to their financial information. Third, they can turn off that access at any time.
Jo Jagadish, head of U.S. digital banking, payments and consumer deposits at TD, framed the trade the bank is trying to make: protection for customer data alongside the flexibility to use whatever digital tools customers prefer. "Our relationship with Akoya helps us deliver both, offering clients a choice in how they connect their financial data while building the foundation for the innovative financial experiences of tomorrow," Jagadish said in the release.
Akoya CEO Paul LaRusso put the industry framing on it: "It's the model more banks are adopting, and TD is helping lead the way." Both statements come from the companies' own press release, which is worth remembering — an announcement describes intent, and the fourth-quarter rollout will be the test of whether the connections survive a Tuesday afternoon of real traffic.
Why is a big retail bank doing this now?
The release does not state a regulatory trigger, so any causal story would be speculation. What the record does support is the competitive logic LaRusso articulated: the API-based model is what more banks are adopting, and a bank that cannot offer clean, revocable data connections risks losing app-connected customers to one that can. A November PYMNTS Intelligence report, "Business at Risk: How Credit Unions Can Attract—and Keep—SMB Members," found that open banking is one of the capabilities that set top-performing credit unions apart from the lowest-ranked performers — evidence that data-sharing capability has become a performance marker even outside the largest banks. We covered a connected angle in Banking While Unbanked: How to Open a Bank Account With Thin Credit or a Rough History.
For TD, the operational timeline is concrete: apps and data aggregators begin onboarding in the fourth quarter. Everything between announcement and full coverage — which apps, which aggregators, what data scopes — is not in the release, and readers should treat those details as unconfirmed until the companies specify them.
What should professionals watch next?
Three items. Whether the fourth-quarter onboarding hits its window, and how quickly the app roster fills. Whether TD clients actually use the visibility and revocation controls, since a permission dashboard nobody opens changes little. And whether other large banks follow the same route through a shared data network rather than building their own connections — a pattern that would concentrate both convenience and dependency in a handful of intermediaries. Readers following this should also see How Overdraft Fees Work and What Changed Since Banks Cut Them.
What the evidence establishes is a bank moving its data-sharing onto governed rails with customer-controlled permissions. What remains unknown is adoption, scope, and whether the security gains translate into the consumer experience the 2021 survey data suggested customers already expect.
