Connect once, share in a tap: how consent works
Why connecting your bank is a one-time step, and why sharing with each new app only takes a single tap — in plain English.
The first time you connect your bank or energy provider to openfeed, it takes a few minutes and a full round trip to your provider. After that, sharing your data with any app is a single tap. Here’s why the two feel so different — and the reason openfeed is both safe and fast.
Two kinds of “yes”
There are two separate approvals happening, and keeping them apart is the whole trick.
- Connecting your account: the once per year step where you link your bank or energy provider through the Consumer Data Right, Australia’s government-backed data-sharing system. It’s deliberately thorough: you log in with your provider, confirm what you’re connecting, and you only do this once per provider. (Walked through in Getting started.)
- Sharing with an app: because your data is already safely in openfeed, letting a new app see it is just one screen: pick the accounts, confirm, done. No provider login, no codes, no starting over.
Why keeping them separate matters
Because the heavy step already happened, everything after it is light — and reversible. The Consumer Data Right has many rules and obligations that make it challenging to make it smoother but recent guidance has clarified that if you the consumer choose to disclose downstream - that is your right.
- Sharing is fast: each new app is one tap, not another full provider login.
- The two are independent, so you can turn things off at whichever level you need:
- Turn off one app: withdraws only that app’s permission. Your underlying CDR connection to your bank and energy accounts stays exactly as it was, and every other app keeps working.
- Disconnect openfeed entirely: revokes openfeed’s access to your bank and energy accounts, and we remove that data from our database. Apps get nothing new after you revoke, though they may keep data they already received.
- You stay in control: sharing is per account, inherits the Privacy Act, and spelled out in plain English before you confirm. We don’t permit applications without an Australian business presence.
That independence is the part that matters most for peace of mind: you can share freely, knowing you can pull any single app’s access without disturbing anything else.
Want the step-by-step of sharing, editing and turning apps off? How onward sharing works walks through it.