As mentioned on another thread, the UK enforces such an API for the largest banks (it's voluntary for the others at the moment) https://www.openbanking.org.uk/
This is part of a wider "challenger bank" initiative. Creating space for smaller, usually digital only, banks to create more competition in the consumer banking market. This was thought to be especially important after the "too big to fail" crash. Directly breaking up the larger banks was never going to happen, so instead they created an environment where competition could (hopefully) flourish.
In my mind the question is why wouldn't they be? It's your transaction data, you have many legitimate uses for it, why not require open access? It's like GDPR but for your bank records. The data's available now, it's just crap. Sometimes banks need a kick in the pants to straighten up.
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why would a bank be required to expose this for a 3rd party commercial user?
As mentioned on another thread, the UK enforces such an API for the largest banks (it's voluntary for the others at the moment) https://www.openbanking.org.uk/
This is part of a wider "challenger bank" initiative. Creating space for smaller, usually digital only, banks to create more competition in the consumer banking market. This was thought to be especially important after the "too big to fail" crash. Directly breaking up the larger banks was never going to happen, so instead they created an environment where competition could (hopefully) flourish.
the US doesn't need more banks. The market is actually culling them dramatically- https://www.fdic.gov/bank/statistical/stats/2019Mar/FDIC.pdf (number of banks since 1990!)
From what I can tell there are 10x (about) as many "banks" in the US.
It should be required to pass it on to you and for you to seamlessly pass it on to any third party of your choosing.
In my mind the question is why wouldn't they be? It's your transaction data, you have many legitimate uses for it, why not require open access? It's like GDPR but for your bank records. The data's available now, it's just crap. Sometimes banks need a kick in the pants to straighten up.