| Agreed. I already dislike the requirement of submitting to a credit check for services that aren't lending (and thus don't have to comply with finance-related regulations), have a fixed cost and can be trivially cut-off in case of non-payment such as internet or telephone service. Sadly, this battle has already been lost and the practice has been normalized; most people don't bat an eye and in monopolized industries they don't have a choice anyway. Open Banking making this even easier is not a good thing as it just means more and more companies will now be doing this, with the inevitable overreaching data collection that follows. At least with a credit check, all the information they get is identity verification and a very high-level overview of any credit accounts you have open and whether they're in good standing. With Open Banking, they get a full account history, including detailed timestamps and locations for card purchases (if the bank supports it - modern banks do, and it's just a matter of time before legacy banks catch up). That's a lot of personal data which can be misused for discrimination, price segmentation, etc with very little oversight. |