While I understand the risk of sharing sensitive information (e.g. bank login) with a 3rd party. But the current situation is such that your bank currently monopolize your bank information to improve your loan offer, to give you better service at better rate based on their understanding of your bank transaction history.

Currently, there is no aligned format for sharing your bank transaction history with other financial institution of your choice. Your current bank is the one who purposely makes it hard (only allowing you to share it through the same bank login) so that you are more locked-in in their eco system.

I used to work with Plaid as a provider, and you will notice certain banks who really do not like their customers using Plaid in sharing their bank transaction history with competitors will often have unscheduled maintenance that Plaid wouldn’t work so that you as a user would find friction using someone else and stay with only using products within their ecosystem.

I think the real question is less about why are we using Plaid to share our transaction information. If we are to have an open format to share our banking transaction history, what should be that format and what would be the lock and key for it?