Introduction
Akoya operates an API-based network for sharing consumer-permissioned financial data between banks and the fintech apps and aggregators their customers use. Fidelity Investments originated Akoya internally in 2018 as a way to move banks away from screen scraping — the practice of fintech apps logging into a bank account using a customer’s own credentials — and spun the business off as an independent company in February 2020, jointly owned by Fidelity, The Clearing House, and 11 major U.S. banks.
Akoya is less a consumer-facing AI product than a piece of shared infrastructure that sits alongside aggregators like Plaid in the open-banking data-sharing landscape. For readers of Brel’s AI in finance coverage, Akoya illustrates an alternative governance model for the data pipes that many AI-driven lending and personal-finance tools ultimately depend on: bank-owned rather than aggregator-run.
What the company does
Akoya’s network connects financial institutions on one side with fintechs and data aggregators on the other, using APIs rather than shared login credentials to transfer consumer-permissioned account data. According to Akoya’s own materials, a single integration with its network lets an institution avoid negotiating and maintaining separate direct connections with every fintech or aggregator that wants access to its customers’ data, while Akoya itself does not copy, store, or hold the financial data or personal information that passes through its passthrough model.
Who it serves
Akoya’s direct customers are banks and other financial institutions that want a managed way to expose customer data through APIs, and the fintechs and data aggregators — including, under specific agreements, competitors such as Plaid — that consume that data on behalf of end-user applications. Its ownership base doubles as an anchor customer set: Bank of America, Capital One, Citi, Fidelity, Huntington Bank, JPMorgan Chase, KeyBank, PNC Bank, TD Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo are each both owners and users of the network, per Akoya’s 2020 spin-off announcement.
Company background
Akoya originated inside Fidelity Investments in 2018 as an industry response to the risks of screen scraping, and was publicly unveiled by Fidelity in 2019 ahead of its spin-off. On February 20, 2020, FMR LLC — Fidelity’s parent company — announced that Akoya had become an independent company jointly owned by Fidelity, The Clearing House Payments Company, and 11 of its member banks, a structure intended to give the broader banking industry, not just Fidelity, a stake in the network’s governance. Stuart Rubinstein, who led Akoya from its founding, announced his intention to retire in early 2022 and was succeeded as CEO by Paul LaRusso, effective January 5, 2023. Akoya has continued to operate as a consortium-owned utility rather than pursuing a sale to a single acquirer; a September 2024 bilateral data-access agreement between PNC and Plaid — under which PNC continued to use Akoya as its API service provider — illustrates how Akoya can serve as connective infrastructure even for banks working directly with competing aggregators.
Product and AI capabilities
Akoya itself is data infrastructure rather than an AI vendor in the way underwriting or fraud-detection companies are: its core technology standardizes and secures API-based data transfer rather than scoring risk or detecting fraud directly. Its relevance to AI in finance is downstream, in the same way Plaid’s is — AI-driven lenders, budgeting apps, and identity-verification tools that rely on verified bank data from Akoya-connected institutions depend on that underlying pipe being reliable and API-based rather than credential-based, which reduces certain security and reliability risks compared with screen scraping.
Key developments
Akoya was created inside Fidelity in 2018 and spun off as an independent, bank-and-Fidelity-owned company on February 20, 2020. Paul LaRusso became CEO in January 2023, succeeding founding CEO Stuart Rubinstein. In September 2024, PNC and Plaid announced a data-access agreement in which PNC continued using Akoya’s API to deliver customer data to Plaid and other recipients, illustrating Akoya’s role as connective infrastructure that can coexist with, rather than simply compete against, other aggregators.
Why it matters
Akoya’s consortium ownership model is a useful counterpoint to the more commonly discussed aggregator-led model of companies like Plaid: rather than a single company controlling the data pipe between banks and fintechs, a group of major banks jointly own and govern the infrastructure that moves their own customers’ data. For readers evaluating how open banking is likely to be regulated and structured going forward, Akoya’s existence is a sign that large financial institutions have been willing to invest in shared infrastructure rather than depending entirely on third-party aggregators for API-based data access.
Sector context
Akoya is part of Brel’s AI in finance coverage as connectivity infrastructure, playing a broadly similar role to Plaid in linking bank accounts to fintech applications, though under a bank-owned governance model rather than an independent aggregator structure.
Sources and references
This profile is based on Akoya’s own “Our Story” company page, the official 2020 spin-off announcement from Fidelity and its bank partners, and PNC’s official announcement of its 2024 data-access agreement with Plaid.
- Akoya — “Our Story” official company page (akoya.com)
- BusinessWire — Akoya spin-off announcement (2020)
- PNC Financial Services Group — PNC-Plaid data access agreement (2024)