Open banking take-up in the Netherlands less than expected because government promoted GDPR so well

It seems that the Dutch government made such a good job at promoting GDPR that people have become incredibly wary of allowing their banks to share some of their data.

I was talking to a contact who had attended a the European Payment Summit in the Hague recently.

He said the Dutch government heavily promoted GDPR and later open banking (PSDII) with a major advertising campaign including TV adverts. “There was much more promotion of open banking/PSDII than in the UK but take up was still very low.”

I would expect the Dutch to be more willing to try out open banking than most nationalities.

But then the reason for the low take up became clearer. Part of the conference included a survey about open banking take-up.

People were asked why they had not taken up open banking services in the survey. It seems that many are cautious because only a few months earlier people were being told, in great depth, the importance of GDPR to protect their personal information. Then they were being told of the benefits of letting banks give third party companies access to data.

One fintech I spoke to about this said it was quite unfortunate that GDPR and open banking regulation arrived around the same time.

This highlights the challenges for governments and fintechs when introducing new regulation and technology.

I think if anyone was bombarded with information from the government about protecting personal details and then suddenly asked to give permission for their bank to share information about themselves, they would be cautious to say the least.