What If Banks Just Handled the Plumbing?

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. Episode #903651 — open it directly at myweirdprompts.com/903651