[os7borne]

I'm guessing the reason these universal API's don't exist is because there would be no business model and hence no billion dollar companies. However, Europe's PSD2 regulation was essentially launched to establish these open API's for banking

[cube00]

I watched a bank CEO claim the security of their customer's data was the reason it was tightly controlled and API access was only available to their trusted partners for the purposes of running credit checks and other things that make the bank's own life easier. They also followed that up with a spiel about how open to competition they are.