Selam,
There is an idea to build a platform that will unify open banking interfaces. Due to EU laws all banks inside EU are forced to open banking services for the Fintech community that can build platforms or solutions to benefit the customer. To illustrate, a customer can have an aggregated historical data for all his transactions made in last year for all banks he has account to.
I was invited to be part of the team to build this platform that can consume open banking services. The platform is NOT going to execute any transaction because will be for View Only mode.
Q1: Is it permissible (not haram) to be part of this project?
Q2: If it is permissible to work, later on after I leave the company and they transitions the platform to services which include interests (not service fees) am I eating haram as I have contributed to this platform at the beginning?
In my opinion, this is permissible for you to be a part of. The reasoning is, the tool you are developing is multi-purpose. It can be used by shariah compliant interfaces or non-Shariah compliant. Therefore, from a Fiqh perspective, you cannot be held accountable for what is done downstream as it is remote to you.
Your income was in lieu of your services. Since you delivered lawful services at the time, your income was lawful. You will not have any connection to what happens in the future with the open banking interface.
May Allah be pleased with you and all other brothers who try to clarify some of the hot topics in Fintech.
Now there have been some changes in the business model of the above explained model.
The business model at initial will be a Payment Processor (e.g Revolut). Later on, it might add other products like Crypto/Stock Trading, Open Banking Interface or even transition to a digital bank. Currently, our Central Bank provides license only to Payment Processor or Payment Gateway.
Additional
Fee applications: transaction, service and cross/up selling fees will be part of the solution.
Question: I will be accountable for building the core account management system (later called core banking) and maybe have the possibility to be part of Employee Equity. Is this permissible for me to be part building process of the core solution (even if this is used later for banking) and can I have equity to the company until (might) start interest based solutions?
InshAllah I was clear enough and please I need your answer asap.