I wonder if it&#x27;s government regulation that&#x27;s driven British banks to be innovators.<p>&quot;Faster payments&quot; (electronic payments that clear within 2 hours, usually minutes) were requested by the government. [1].<p>The Current Accounts Switching Service [2] makes it much easier (zero effort for the customer) to transfer a current account to a different bank, which the government also required.<p>In fact, that&#x27;s led me to &quot;7 ways banking has been made easier&quot;, [3], from the government.<p>So, some open data standards seem the natural progression from this.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Faster_Payments_Service#Background" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Faster_Payments_Service#Backgr...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gov.uk&#x2F;government&#x2F;news&#x2F;bank-account-switching-service-set-to-launch" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gov.uk&#x2F;government&#x2F;news&#x2F;bank-account-switching-se...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gov.uk&#x2F;government&#x2F;news&#x2F;7-ways-banking-has-been-made-easier" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gov.uk&#x2F;government&#x2F;news&#x2F;7-ways-banking-has-been-m...</a><p>Edit to add: The first paragraph of the executive summary of the report is &quot;In  the  2015  Budget  HM  Treasury  announced  its  commitment  to  delivering  an  open  standard  for Application Programming Interfaces in UK banking, to help customers have more control over their data and to make it easier for financial technology companies (FinTechs) or other businesses to make use of bank data on behalf of customers in a variety of helpful and innovative ways.&quot;