Latest / Marketing Automation with Fexingo: HubSpot, Marketo, and Automated Customer Journeys / Why Marketing Automation Ignores Customer Open Banking Connections
Transcript
- Lucas: So open banking — it's been around for years now, at least since PSD2 in Europe. But here we are in July 2026, and I can count on one hand the number of marketing automation workflows I've seen that actually use it. Luna: You mean like HubSpot or Marketo pulling in data from a customer's bank account in real time? Lucas: Exactly. Not just bank transactions, but things like — did a customer just open a new credit card? Did they switch their main current account? Did they get approved for a mortgage? These are huge life events, and most marketers have no idea they're happening. Luna: Well, there's the obvious privacy elephant in the room. People might not want their bank data flowing into a marketing platform. Lucas: Right, and that's a real barrier. But the thing is, open banking was built with consent at its core. The customer has to explicitly authorise each connection. So if a customer opts in — say, during onboarding for a financial app — you could theoretically get a feed of events. Luna: And what would you actually do with it? Give me a concrete example. Lucas: Let's use the UK, where open banking has actually hit 12 million active users as of early this year. Imagine you're a bank or a fintech, and a customer links their account via open banking. You see that their credit card balance just dropped to zero — they paid it off. That's a perfect trigger for a 'congratulations, here's how we can help you invest that freed-up cash' email. Luna: That's smart. But most marketing automation platforms don't have native connectors for open banking APIs. So it's a custom integration job. Lucas: That's exactly the gap. HubSpot's app marketplace has thousands of integrations, but I looked last week — there's no open banking connector. Marketo has a few fintech-related plugins, but nothing that listens to transaction webhooks. So the technical lift is on the marketer. Luna: And then you've got the question of whether the data is actually useful for marketing beyond banking. Like, if I'm a retailer and a customer links their bank account, maybe I see they bought groceries at a competitor. That feels creepy. Lucas: Yeah, there's a fine line between helpful and invasive. But there's a middle ground: event-based triggers that don't expose the raw transaction data. You just get a signal — 'life event: new mortgage' or 'life event: salary increase above threshold.' No amounts, no merchant names. Just the event. Luna: So it's almost like a reverse credit score. Instead of a number, you get a stream of milestones. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what some fintechs are already doing. Take the UK's Moneyhub or Yolt — they have open banking APIs that can push events to a webhook. But the marketing automation side hasn't caught up. Luna: So who's closest to making this work? Any major platform showing signs? Lucas: Salesforce has a financial services cloud, and they've talked about open banking integration, but it's more about CRM data enrichment than triggered journeys. Braze — which is big in mobile marketing — has a more flexible event ingestion model, so you could build it yourself if you had a middleware layer. Luna: That sounds like a lot of work for most marketing teams. They'd need a data engineer just to set up the pipeline. Lucas: They would. And that's why adoption is slow. But I think the bigger barrier is mindset. Marketers are used to behavioural data — clicks, opens, page views. Financial life events are a whole new category, and it's not obvious how to use them without sounding like you're snooping. Luna: Especially if the message is wrong. Imagine getting 'Congratulations on your mortgage!' and you actually just took out a payday loan. Lucas: Right. The signal quality matters. Open banking categorisation isn't perfect yet. But it's getting better. The Open Banking Standard in the UK now requires transaction categorisation to a certain level, so you can separate a mortgage from a personal loan. Luna: I wonder if there's a first-mover advantage here. If a bank or a fintech nails this, they could dominate customer engagement. Lucas: Totally. And it's not just banking. Think about insurance. If open banking shows a customer just bought a new car, you can trigger an auto insurance quote. If they're paying for a gym membership, maybe a health insurance upsell. Luna: That's actually less creepy than the retailer example, because it's within the same financial services ecosystem. Lucas: Exactly. And the customer consented to that connection. They know their data is being used to get better offers. Luna: So what's the practical advice for a marketer listening today who wants to explore this? Lucas: Start with a single life event that's common and unambiguous. For example, a salary increase — you can often see that as a recurring credit that jumps by a meaningful amount. Then build a simple email sequence: thank them, offer a savings product or a financial planning tool. Test it with a small opt-in segment. Luna: And you'd need a platform that can handle custom webhooks. Something like Zapier or Workato in the middle, passing data from the open banking provider to your marketing tool. Lucas: Exactly. And if you're in Europe, you're already compliant with PSD2. In the US, it's more fragmented because open banking is still voluntary, but the CFPB's new rule is pushing it forward. Luna: Let's take a quick step back — if these conversations are sparking ideas that you've actually applied, or even just enjoyed thinking through, a couple of dollars a month genuinely helps keep this show ad-free. It's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Small amounts, real difference. Lucas: Yeah, exactly. It's what lets us dig into topics like this without any sponsor pressure. So back to open banking — one thing I want to highlight is that the window for early mover advantage is closing. In the UK, the Open Banking Implementation Entity has been pushing for more standardised APIs, and by 2027 they expect 25 million users. Luna: So if you're a marketer in financial services, you should probably start experimenting this year. Lucas: I'd say that's the takeaway. Don't wait for your marketing automation platform to natively support it. Build a proof of concept with a middleware tool and a single trigger. Learn what works, what customers respond to, and what feels intrusive. Luna: And if you're not in financial services? Is there any play? Lucas: Maybe for subscription businesses. If a customer's bank account shows a recurring payment to a competitor, that's a churn signal. But again, privacy boundaries are tighter. I'd say stick to financial services for now. Luna: Fair. So bottom line: open banking data is a rich but underused trigger source for marketing automation, with significant technical and perception hurdles, but the pioneers will get a real edge. Lucas: That's it. And I'd love to see a major platform like HubSpot or Marketo announce a native connector in the next year. That would change everything. Luna: Yeah, it feels inevitable. Just a matter of timing.