Superb points made by /hyperman1 and while everyone may like to believe that JSON or other formats will take over but in the core financial world, aside from all the Fintech popups using JSON, XML is here to stay. Having personally created many APIs around XML the benefits are vast inclusive of the points made above but human readability is key in speed resolution when needing to understand and issue when someone's money is involved.

While the original authors dislike for XML appears apparent in a personal memory throw back read which I enjoyed, if he consults with core finance he will continue to use XML well into the foreseeable future. ISO20022 is coming to core payments everywhere in the approaching future such as with FedNow real-time payments and yes, it is XML.