Weekly Global News Wrap Up: European banks forced to share data with fintechs; EU scraps proposal for banks to split up

And find out how personal banking is evolving.

From Bloomberg: For years, European banks have been self-contained fortresses that plied their customers with everything from checking accounts to credit cards to mortgages, while stockpiling terabytes of data on their spending habits. Now these institutions are about to open up like never before as lawmakers seek to foster competition. Starting in January, lenders in the European Union will have to provide rival firms with access to their customers’ accounts and data, as long as clients give their permission.

From Reuters: The EU has scrapped a draft law that could have forced the bloc’s biggest banks to split up in order to reduce the risk of them being “too big to fail”, in a rare move that will cheer major trading firms. A European Union bank structural reform law was proposed in 2014, a relatively late addition to rules rolled out after the 2007-09 banking crisis which resulted in taxpayer bailouts. It was meant to be Europe’s answer to the U.S. Volcker Rule, a crisis-era measure banning Wall Street banks from speculating with their own money which is due to be scaled back significantly by U.S. regulators.

From CNBC: Contactless payments, instantaneous transfers, chip and pin — the way we bank and manage our money has changed dramatically over the past few years. Today, many of us send money and manage our finances using our smartphones. A recent report from U.K. Finance and EY, for example, stated that 19.6 million people in the U.K. used banking apps last year.