Why Aiia: Privacy by design

September 17, 2021 | Louise Basse

It’s been more than a decade since we started our open banking journey with the promise to bring positive change to society and to challenge the financial industry. 

To deliver on that promise, and to build an open banking platform that simply works, we’ve always focused on three building principles to create an open banking platform that’s second-to-none:  

• Quality over quantity 
• Privacy by design
• Secure and compliant

In the second part of our Why Aiia series, we explain why privacy by design is essential to create trust and transparency with open banking services. 

Did you miss the first part of the series about what quality over quantity means for your business? Read it here.

A platform based on privacy by design 

“We want to build our model based on privacy by design.” 

Written sloppily on a piece of paper in a kitchen more than 10 years ago, those are the words that laid the foundation for Aiia’s building principle, privacy by design. 

Because we put the consumer at the centre of everything we do, privacy by design is a cornerstone of Aiia’s existence, our Co-founder, Gudmundur Hreidarsson, explains:

“We’ve always accepted that we are humans — and humans make mistakes. Therefore, it's been essential for us to design our software in a way in which privacy can never be jeopardised," he says and continues: 

“With Aiia, there’s simply no way of not respecting privacy because it’s a fundamental element in the platform we’ve built.”

Use data the way it was intended to 

In that way, we see privacy by design as a principle that makes sure financial data is only ever shared when the owner of it explicitly allows. Commenting on that, our CEO, Rune Mai, explains: 

“Because we’re all living incredibly busy lives and are bombarded with all sorts of information, we believe sharing data is a natural part of the way we live. It becomes a necessity for us to get the personalisation that we all want so desperately,” he says and emphasises: 

“But the one who shares financial data must be in absolute control and feel safe around the sharing, otherwise the whole concept isn’t going to work. With our privacy by design model, we ensure that everyone who shares financial data with businesses is in complete control at all times.” 

Build trust with the Aiia Hub 

It's always been a cornerstone of our platform that no one should be able to store or process data that wasn't intended to be stored or processed.

Over the last 10 years, we’ve given talks and lectures in data protection forums on how to work with data without compromising privacy. One of our Co-founders, Christian Panton, even won the Data Protection Prize in 2019 for his efforts to reduce public surveillance. 

To make sure end users have full control over what services they’re sharing their financial data with, we’ve created the Aiia Hub, which provides complete transparency. 

Here, users always have an accurate, up-to-date overview of which bank accounts they've shared with which services through Aiia. In the hub, users also have the option to add or remove accounts and revoke shared data from a service.

Best of all? Signing up to the Aiia Hub is free and requires nothing more than an email.