If that's not enough, you can just use Plaid. Am I missing something here?
Plaid has, or used to have, a mode where in preprod you could give it your credentials to a limited number of organizations and then pull in your data. Not sure that survived the Visa acquisition, but even if it did- personally implementing a Plaid integration gave me the willies. Handing over creds was in clear violation of bank terms of service. Plaid seemed to be playing fast and loose from a security perspective (IMO) and retained the right to keep your data even if you removed credentials. Was not comfortable.
Having implemented scrapers to pull my data- that option also painful.
OP is not wrong.
Generally speaking, yes, presumably because API access to checking and savings accounts is only applicable to businesses 99% of the time.
Most consumers, even programmers, don’t have a real need for API access to their accounts that isn’t already covered by simple CSVs or Plaid.
Basically, the bank UX sucks for my needs - and I'm guessing, for most people's needs[0]. Cynic in me says that the reason I can't get an API access is because somebody then would make an interface that doesn't suck, and the banks would lose the best place they can upsell people with financial products.
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[0] - There's a reason why "preview your balance and last transaction" feature shows up in mobile banking apps these days.