Who counts as a third-party provider in open finance?

A third-party provider in open finance is any company that accesses consumer financial data through an intermediary or directly from a financial institution to power a product or service – a category that includes fintechs delivering budgeting apps, lending platforms, and payment initiation services, but also accountants, wealth managers, and merchants.

Two distinctions matter for understanding who this actually covers:

1. The use case defines the category, not the industry label: A merchant or wealth manager accessing consumer financial data to power its own service is a third-party provider in exactly the same sense as a dedicated fintech, even though “fintech” isn't how it would describe itself.
2. Access can run through an intermediary or be direct: Some third-party providers connect through an aggregator or other intermediary; others connect directly to a financial institution – the risk and accreditation question applies either way.

This matters practically because a business that doesn't think of itself as a fintech – an accounting platform, a wealth management tool, a merchant checkout service – can still be a third-party provider for accreditation and risk purposes, simply by virtue of the data access involved.

About Invela

Invela is the infrastructure layer that makes open finance trustworthy – accrediting who's in the network, monitoring risk in real time, and ensuring liability lands in the right place. Open finance, covered.