The year 2026 is poised to be a breakthrough one for open banking in Canada. Bill C-15 — which would implement measures from the 2025 federal budget — is currently before Parliament.
If passed, Bill C-15 will complete and modernize Canada’s Consumer-Driven Banking Act by giving the Bank of Canada oversight over a new open banking framework that lets consumers and small businesses securely share their financial data with the third parties they choose.
To date, discussions about this new framework have largely focused on promoting competition and technological innovation. Equally important, however, is its potential to help women experiencing economic abuse.
Economic abuse is widespread
Economic abuse is a hidden and harmful form of gender-based violence that happens when someone uses money or other resources to control, exploit or harm another person.
Common abuse tactics include restricting access to household income and benefits, withholding financial information, monitoring every purchase, excluding a partner from critical financial decisions, building up debt in their name and preventing them from accessing banking or credit on their own.
Statistics Canada and federal data show that financial abuse disproportionately affects women. The Canadian Centre for Women’s Empowerment estimates that economic abuse affects one in three women who are victims of intimate partner violence nationwide.
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In a study of victims of gender violence in the Ottawa region, 93 per cent of respondents reported not having access to their own money. Eighty-six per cent said they had been ordered to quit work by an abusive partner, leading to further isolation and financial dependence.
Economic abuse also extends beyond households into family-owned and co-owned businesses, which make up over 60 per cent of Canadian businesses.
It is common for one partner to “handle the books” and be the only person with access to business banking, merchant accounts, payroll systems and tax portals. The other partner may be a legal director of the corporation but have no access to the company’s financial information.
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Banks are enabling economic abuse. Here’s how they could be stopping it
Existing bank policies can unintentionally reinforce this imbalance. If a director is not listed on the bank’s forms, staff often refuse to confirm whether any accounts exist, let alone release statements or transaction histories — even when that director is legally responsible for the corporation.
This can leave survivors and business partners unable to document wrongdoing, verify financial activity or protect their legal and economic interests.
Helping women experiencing economic abuse
Open banking is fundamentally about consumer control and protections around sharing financial data. Under an open banking framework, banks are no longer the sole gatekeepers of financial information.
This means a person who can prove their identity can authorize a regulated third party — such as an accredited app, accountant or a lawyer — to retrieve the data they are legally entitled to. They wouldn’t have to rely on another account holder or log in on a shared device in an unsafe environment.
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Consider, for example, a woman who jointly owns a café but whose partner is the only person dealing with the bank. He refuses to give her the login and destroys paper statements. When she goes to the branch alone, staff tell her that both owners must consent before they can release detailed records. She suspects money is being taken out of the business but has no way to confirm it.
In an open banking environment, once her identity as a co-owner is verified, she can authorize a regulated provider to pull the transaction history and loan information for the business account through secure data sharing. The bank would be obliged to supply this data through the open banking channel. Her partner’s password and co-operation would no longer determine access.
A trauma-informed open banking framework
The ability of Canada’s new open banking framework to help mitigate economic abuse will depend on how survivor safety, joint accounts and small business governance are addressed. We can learn from other jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom where researchers have partnered with both banks and victim-survivors to build survivor-centred banking frameworks.
Banks and accredited providers need clear protocols for working with survivors. In Australia, customer-owned banks have developed protocols to verify identity safely, handle joint accounts in situations of conflict and avoid notifying an abusive partner in ways that escalate risk.
These protocols can include silent authentication processes, independent verification for each legal account holder, safeguards against automatic notifications and referral pathways to legal or community support when financial abuse is suspected.
Community organizations, shelters and legal clinics also need resources to act as trusted intermediaries, helping clients use open banking tools without exposing themselves to digital surveillance or retaliation. In the U.K., community legal clinics and domestic violence organizations already act as trusted intermediaries.
Policymakers should recognize open banking as part of Canada’s response to economic abuse and small business resilience, not only as a competition or financial sector reform. If designed with safety in mind, data mobility can help survivors document abuse, regain financial autonomy and keep businesses alive.
Eric Saumure, CPA, CA and principal at Zenbooks and founder of OpenSME, co-authored this article.
