EXCLUSIVE— With P2D2 and other regulatory initiatives mandating the sharing of customer data, open banking is slowly becoming a reality in the United Kingdom and other European countries.

Other areas like the United States, however, have not been quite so prolific, a fact that might actually make UK fintechs more appealing to customers if those companies set up shop in the U.S.

“If the U.S. doesn’t mandate something like open banking, it will actually be a huge advantage for us,” Megan Caywood, chief platform officer at Starling Bank, told Bank Innovation, adding that “the regulation is good for customers,” which could shoulder aside banks that don’t embrace it.

As a UK-based challenger bank, Starling is certainly no stranger to open banking. The challenger provides current accounts to its customers. However, it is focusing on building out a partnership model to provide its users with access to other financial products — such as mortgages, savings, or investments — as opposed to building out those products itself.

“What you’re really seeing is [fintech] companies focusing on doing one thing, and doing that one thing really well,” Caywood said of the growing fintech ecosystem. “What we’re doing is aggregating those different services, so Starling can become the single [platform] of your financial life.”

Starling is accomplishing this goal through a couple of initiatives, the most recent being its Marketplace platform. Built to host third-party apps and fintechs, the platform allows for greater transparency and user choice as different financial services are integrated, said Caywood.

The platform allows a third-party service—like Flux, enabled when Starling announced the platform earlier this month, or newer entrant MoneyBox — to integrate into the Starling ecosystem using its API, where users can then access them.

This gives consumers better choice and clarity into their financials as well as better utilizing the specialized skills of these emerging fintechs, said Caywood, not to mention, Marketplace effectively allows Starling to become the hub of the new open banking ecosystem.

Plus, as Marketplace goes wherever Starling goes, it could eventually make its way across the pond to a place where consumers might not be getting the open banking experience they’re asking for.

The challenger bank is already planning on global expansion with a new round of funding. Its first stop is Ireland and the rest of Europe — but, while there’s no “set date,” according to Caywood, the U.S. is on its list.

With Starling, maybe open banking will gain a foothold into the U.S.

“There was this idea that banks owned customer data… PSD2, open banking, flips that on its head,” Caywood said. “We wanted to be a thought-leader in this space.”