# Open Banking in Australia: a primer

> What Open Banking is, how it grew out of the Consumer Data Right, what data is in scope, and how openfeed makes it usable for everyone.

- Category: guides
- Audience: all
- Updated: 2026-07-02
- Canonical: https://openfeed.au/resources/open-banking-primer

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"Open Banking" is the banking slice of Australia's Consumer Data Right (CDR).
It gives you the right to share your own banking data, securely and with your
explicit consent, with Accredited Data Recipients you choose. This primer focuses on
the banking specifics: what data is in scope and how it works in practice. For
the general framing of the CDR itself, see
[What is the Consumer Data Right?](/resources/what-is-cdr).

## What data is in scope

Under Open Banking, with your explicit consent, you can share your:

- **Account details**: account names, numbers and balances.
- **Transaction data**: the debits and credits on your accounts.

You always choose which accounts and which data types are included in a share.

## Why it was hard to use, and what changed

The CDR is powerful but technically demanding: every data holder exposes its
own endpoints, and businesses historically had to become accredited and build a
separate integration per holder. That is why adoption lagged the ambition.

openfeed collapses that complexity. Consumers connect a holder once and share in
a single tap. Developers connect via OAuth 2.0 and reach every holder through a single REST API. 
See [How onward sharing works](/resources/how-onward-sharing-works) for the consumer flow and the [Quickstart](/resources/quickstart) for the developer
flow.

## Your protections

- Sharing is **opt-in** and **scoped**: Nothing moves without your consent.
- Consent is **revocable**: Cancel any share per app instantly.
- Data disclosed by openfeed is still protected byt he Privacy Act and it's associated obligations
- openfeed is **only** available to **Australian based** businesses