UK Banking Retail OPEN API

This has been on my mind a lot recently, mainly out of frustration with using my bank's web sites as they don't support Firefox very well.  More so, my bank and credit card providers especially are a total pain in the butt when it comes to working out which cookies and javascripts to enable for their various domains - this becomes a total headache when doing payment processing if you start using other TLDs I've got no idea about and have not yet 'allowed' to use client-side javascript.

#1 Please tell us what to enable so we can browse the web safely using great Firefox plugins (which don't exist on IE!) such as NoScript, AdBlock Plus and CookieSafe - lets not forget Microsoft recommended using Firefox as it was a safer browser and banks are forever moaning about the issues of online fraud. Wake up! Get your collective acts together!

Before anyone starts talking fraff about security it's a no-brainer to have the settings on "allow-all" and retrospecitvely study what you were using so please be proactive and tell us before we go down the path of a payment to find it bork because of this idiocy!

#2 OPEN API, well this is rather simple - rather than muddle yourselves to death trying to innovate why not work out a decent PUBLIC & OPEN API that would allow us to develop some useful applications that actually DO WORK with your systems.

Exploring this route in an open fashion would a) get the best possible audience looking at how to implement a very secure solution to interact with the data and b) get things to market a hell of a lot quicker than working with your internal IT, your consultants and anyone else you're currently paying advice to - lets face it, you got to cut costs and your image/brand as an industry is being dragged through the mud - it's time to act and do something disruptive and get off your collective asses and deliver some value again!

I'm going to add more to this blog post in due course rather than bore you with this rant but for now here's a stake in the ground and lets see if I can muster some collaborative effort from the Finextra community to debate this further...