This is the Trump government failing us and gifting the next generation's financing needs to the next generation of rent-seekers.
Considered in the context of the rest of the UK's regulatory environment (porn filters, etc), it seems plausible that the UK gov's push for bank APIs is less about being kind to their citizens and more about undermining cash and pushing all financial activity onto infrastructure that's easily accessible to a surveillance state.
I'd like to have tech like this in America, but I don't think we have the spine on any front. We aren't willing to hardball businesses on timeline/featureset (for example: the partial and late rollout of chip/pin in the US), and we aren't willing to write legislation that protects citizens from abuse and creates punitive structures that make abuse of citizen data by companies an economically irrational act.
In light of that, I wonder if shitty APIs are the lesser of two evils.