Episode Details

What if we stopped asking banks to be good at customer experience, something they are structurally terrible at, and instead decoupled the whole thing? This episode explores a provocative idea: let banks run the settlement plumbing, interbank transfers, and ledger maintenance, and let a new layer of fintech intermediaries build the actual user experience on top. We examine Israel's Strum Committee, the slow-motion disappointment of open banking regulation, and what a genuine full open banking API with write access could unlock. With a perfect case study in dysfunction — a major card issuer whose call center closes at 4 PM — we ask whether the decoupling model is viable, why banks resist it, and what kinds of companies would flood the market if the keys were finally handed over.