Could they not just offer to pay a premium for a larger API quota and additional support?
More recently I've thought considering that we now only have 4-5 large banks it makes more sense than ever since after 40 years of mergers that are 4-5 banks left and they are abusing their monopoly power.
The issue, of course, is that the US Visa/Mastercard system is an often-offline, pull-based system - meaning that a card set up to always require online transactions may be unusable, preventing banks from providing accounts with a debit card without the potential for an overdraft.
Maintaining their own data center (cloning the data once every 24h) would also mean they need to build a compliance capacity. Currently they don't own any data, they just pave the highway and sniffing the traffic (injecting ads).
> "It does not store or sell users’ personal information, the company said."
This is a big game changer and would require far greater Security/Compliance efforts.
And if the full company is the 9 people appearing in the first photo, then they will need to double that.
Government enabled private monopoly is surely anti-capitalist too (ie as well as anti-communist, etc.).
Capitalism is defined by government maintaining a system of property rights defined to enable private monopoly, though this particular form does clash with the defensive propaganda developed by defenders of the system in response to the criticism of it for doing just that.
OTOH, that propaganda has never really aligned with the reality of capitalism.