Equifax has broadened its open banking offerings by adding consumer-permissioned cash flow insights powered by Mastercard Open Finance, giving lenders and fintechs greater flexibility when selecting the open finance provider they pair with the Equifax consumer credit file.

With the integration, three Mastercard Open Finance products — Cashflow Analytics, Payments Risk Insights, and Transaction Report — are now available to Equifax customers. Lenders and fintechs can select the cash flow data option that best suits their needs and deploy it alongside Equifax credit data in their credit decisioning processes. The integration reflects how deeply consumer-permissioned bank data has moved into the mainstream of U.S. lending: Mastercard's Open Finance platform is built on aggregation technology the payments company gained through its acquisition of data aggregator Finicity, a deal completed in 2020.

The company framed the move as an extension of a longstanding commitment to expanding financial access. The full suite of Equifax Open Banking Solutions uses consumer-permissioned cash flow insights to incorporate bank transaction data, attributes, or scores into lending and portfolio management strategies. By enhancing consumers' ability to build a more robust personal financial profile, the solutions are intended to help financial institutions responsibly broaden credit access and streamline approvals for the 76.1 million thin-file or credit-invisible consumers in the United States. Cash flow underwriting addresses that gap by giving lenders a read on income and drawn directly from bank account activity rather than from a borrower's history of credit accounts alone.

The expanded solutions convert complex bank transaction streams into actionable, real-time credit intelligence designed for seamless integration into existing underwriting stacks:

• Cashflow Analytics analyzes up to 24 months of credits, debits, and balances to produce cash flow attributes lenders can use in underwriting.
• Payments Risk Insights delivers a score that helps lenders predict repayment risk and identify early signs of repayment stress.
• Transaction Report provides six or more months of cleansed, categorized, and enhanced bank transaction data, giving lenders greater flexibility to incorporate cash flow into their underwriting and decisioning models.

"Financial institutions have diverse operational needs, meaning a single cash flow partner does not necessarily fit each organization's needs. Our goal is to give our customers the flexibility to choose the open finance provider that works for them and provide that data alongside Equifax credit and alternative data to make confident decisions that can open up new opportunities for consumers," said Jacob Osborne, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Fintech and Payments at Equifax.

Cash flow data requirements can differ across product types — from personal loans to credit cards to commercial credit lines — because each carries its own repayment structure, risk profile, and decisioning needs. By offering a choice of both solution and open finance provider, Equifax aims to let lenders match the offering that best fits their specific consumers, systems, and strategy. According to the company, this open approach is designed to eliminate integration friction, accelerate deployment, and support confident decisioning across every product line. The approach also lands as cash flow underwriting becomes a fast-developing area across the lending data industry, and as the U.S. regulatory framework for permissioned data sharing takes shape — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has moved in recent years to define consumers' rights to share their bank account data. For lenders and fintechs, the near-term signal to watch is how quickly these options move from availability into production decisioning.

"As lenders and fintechs look to gain a more complete view of financial health, access to trusted, consumer-permissioned cash flow insights becomes increasingly important," said Bart Willaert, Executive Vice President, Open Finance, Americas, at Mastercard. "Our collaboration with Equifax will help organizations make faster, more confident decisions while unlocking new opportunities to expand access to credit."