In the coming weeks, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is expected to issue a new rule superseding a Biden-era interpretation of the Dodd-Frank Act that mandated banks provide data access to financial technology (or fintechs) at zero cost.

But rather than simply repeal the mandate, the agency is reportedly considering a hybrid price control/market regime in which some but not all transactions would have a zero price control. It would be much better for the Trump administration to simply stick to its free-market guns and leave this matter to negotiations between the banks and fintechs.

Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act states banks must provide customer data to fintech firms at the request of mutual customers — including peer-to-peer lending platforms like Zelle and Venmo, or stock market brokers like Robinhood – often through data aggregators, or middlemen. What remained a point of contention up until the Biden administration was whether banks would be able to charge for ongoing, continuous access to that data beyond consumer requests.

In what........

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