The Fair Credit Reporting Act is the US law governing the collection, use, and sharing of consumer credit information, giving consumers rights to access and dispute their data held by credit reporting agencies. It is a long-standing US financial-data-access right that predates open banking, and part of the legal backdrop the CFPB's Section 1033 rule operates against.
Fair Credit Reporting Act
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) is one of the oldest US financial-data laws, governing how consumer credit information is collected, used, and shared, and giving consumers a right to access and dispute what credit reporting agencies hold about them.
- A consumer data-access right, since 1970 - FCRA established, decades before “open banking,” that consumers have rights over financial data others hold about them.
- Accuracy and dispute - It requires accuracy and gives consumers a mechanism to correct their records.
- Backdrop to §1033 - It is part of the layered US regime the CFPB’s Personal Financial Data Rights Rule operates against, extending the access idea from credit files to broader financial data.
FCRA is a reminder that the US did not invent financial-data rights with Section 1033 — it had a partial one for credit data half a century earlier. What §1033 and the CFPB rule add is an API access mandate for a consumer’s broader financial data, turning a paper-era access right into a machine-readable one — the gap that produced the fragmented US market in my research.
Referenced in API Evangelist papers
This regulation shows up in my published research. These reports read the machine-readable evidence provider by provider — and put this regulation in the context of a real sector.
The State of US Banking APIs
A pre-existing US financial-data-access right that frames how §1033 and the CFPB rule extend consumer control over their data.
