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How an Open Standard API Could Revolutionize Banking
An anonymous reader writes: Open bank data will give us the freedom to access all banks in real time and from a single view, automatically calculating the best deals in complete transparency, which will be a significant step forward for social good and give people more control over their finances. Meanwhile, financial tech incubators, accelerators, and startups are creating a more experienced talent pool of developers ready to act upon these newly available assets. From the article: "The United Kingdom government has commissioned a study of the feasibility of UK banks giving customers the ability to share their transactional data with third parties via an open standard API. First mentioned alongside the autumn statement back in December, the chancellor has now outlined plans for a mandatory open banking API standard during the recent budget in March."
An OAuth2 + REST API to just grab this data would be very useful.
Yeah, the banks are going to allow this. And big pharma will make make medicine freely available for the good of all mankind, the music industry will distribute MP3s of all their artists for free over BitTorrent, and Microsoft will cede the desktop to Linux. Any minute now.
Through a self-perpetuating ecosystem of developers, the banks will continue to gather high-value data from customers through third party integration.
I read the article but don't really understand what a "self-perpetuating ecosystem of developers" would do for me. It sounds like they're planning to breed.