Compare / Markets / Payments & Money Movement vs Banking & Open Banking

compare_cohorts

Payments vs Banking: the money movers publish better contracts than the banks

Payments scores 3.9 points higher on average than banking and open banking, with twice as many exemplars. Part of that gap is our own coverage.

Payments & Money Movement

29.3 average
thin on average
Agent readiness 18.9 · agent-aware
1734 scored providers · industry
VS

Banking & Open Banking

25.4 average
emerging on average
Agent readiness 15.6 · agent-aware
892 scored providers · industry

Each sun is drawn from the cohort's averages: six facet rings, the mean Kin Score and mean agent readiness.

Check this first: the gap is partly our coveragePayments & Money Movement scores 3.9 points higher than Banking & Open Banking AND is the better-enriched cohort: 1.5 points less catalog_gap and 4 more artifact directories on the median member. The market difference and our coverage difference point the same way, so this delta cannot be attributed to the markets on its own. Close the enrichment gap, or report both figures together.

Payments and banking sit next to each other in every fintech diagram, but they do not publish APIs the same way. The 1,734 scored payments providers average a Kin Score of 29.3 against 25.4 for the 892 banks and open-banking platforms. The median gap is wider, 28.5 against 20.1, so the difference is not a handful of payment giants pulling the average up. It runs through the middle of the market.

The facets show where. Payments leads on developer ergonomics (33.9 against 27.7) and on contract quality (27.3 against 22.2). That is what you would expect from companies whose product is the API. Banks win one adoption rate: 23% publish OAuth scopes, against 17% of payments providers. That is the open-banking regimes showing through, since they mandate consent scopes.

Read the warning before you quote the gap. depth_confounded is true: we hold four more artifact directories on the median payments provider than on the median bank. Some of the 3.9 points measure how far our enrichment reached, not the market.

The distributions

Payments & Money MovementBanking & Open BankingDelta
Kin Score, mean29.325.4+3.9
Kin Score, median28.520.1+8.4
Kin Score, highest84.684.6
Kin Score, std dev18.318.3
Agent readiness, mean18.915.6+3.3
Agent readiness, highest72.265.8

Delta is Payments & Money Movement minus Banking & Open Banking, as the tool returns it.

Where the providers sit

Payments & Money Movement

exemplar 43strong 109developing 397thin 374emerging 459minimal 352

Banking & Open Banking

exemplar 22strong 46developing 157thin 170emerging 239minimal 258

Facet averages

FacetPayments & Money MovementBanking & Open BankingDelta
Discoverability 63 61.6 +1.4
Contract Quality 27.3 22.2 +5.1
Contract Governance 8.7 8.6 +0.1
Operational Transparency 17.8 14.6 +3.2
Developer Ergonomics 33.9 27.7 +6.2
Access Clarity 28.8 25.7 +3.1

What they publish

Share of each cohort's providers publishing each artifact. mcp_pct counts any mcp/ artifact including ones API Evangelist derived from the provider OpenAPI; mcp_first_party_pct counts only servers the provider publishes. Prefer the latter.

ArtifactPayments & Money MovementBanking & Open BankingDelta
First-party MCP server15%11%+4
Any MCP artifact (incl. derived)16%11%+5
OAuth scopes17%23%-6
Spectral rules17%16%+1
Arazzo workflows3%2%+1
Agent skills0%0%0
Security artifact99%99%0

How well we know each cohort

The coverage behind the averages. A cohort with a higher catalog gap and fewer artifact directories has been enriched less, so part of any difference is our coverage rather than the market.

Payments & Money MovementBanking & Open Banking
Declared members1802925
Scored (in the averages)1734 (96%)892 (97%)
Thinly covered1536792
Median artifact directories1410
Mean catalog gap (points we could add)75.476.9
The full compare_cohorts response
{"a":{"kind":"industry","slug":"payments","name":"Payments & Money Movement","members":1800,"stats":{"kind":"industry","slug":"payments","name":"Payments & Money Movement","tier":"report","coverage":{"declared_members":1802,"resolved_members":1800,"scored_members":1734,"agent_scored_members":1734,"scored_share_pct":96,"unexamined_members":59,"enrichment_depth":{"mean_catalog_gap":75.4,"median_artifact_dirs":14,"n":1734,"thinly_covered":1536,"thinly_covered_of":1734,"thin_coverage_note":"1536 of 1734 scored members had under half their catalog-attributable points satisfied at all (catalog_earned / catalog_max < 0.5). They are INCLUDED in the mean above. A large share here means the cohort mean is partly a measurement of how far our enrichment reached, not only of how these providers publish.","note":"Rubric points API Evangelist could add to the average member with no action by the providers, and the median count of artifact directories we hold on them. A cohort with a higher gap and thinner artifacts has been enriched less, so part of any difference between its mean and another cohort's is our coverage rather than the market. Compare two cohorts only when this figure is comparable. It is an upper bound on our backlog: it says who CAN close a gap, not who did."},"unexamined_note":"Excluded from the distribution: these carry a catalog-owned needs_work flag (never enriched, or no resolvable host). They are listed as members and keep their own page and score; they do not vote in the averages, because their score measures our coverage rather than their posture."},"sufficient":true,"kin_score":{"mean":29.3,"median":28.5,"min":0,"max":84.6,"stdev":18.3},"agent_readiness":{"mean":18.9,"median":20.7,"min":0,"max":72.2,"stdev":17.4},"band_distribution":{"exemplar":43,"strong":109,"developing":397,"thin":374,"emerging":459,"minimal":352},"facet_averages":{"discoverability":{"mean":63,"n":1734},"contract_quality":{"mean":27.3,"n":1734},"contract_governance":{"mean":8.7,"n":1734},"operational_transparency":{"mean":17.8,"n":1734},"developer_ergonomics":{"mean":33.9,"n":1734},"access_clarity":{"mean":28.8,"n":1734}},"adoption":{"mcp_pct":16,"mcp_first_party_pct":15,"mcp_note":"mcp_pct counts any mcp/ artifact including ones API Evangelist derived from the provider OpenAPI; mcp_first_party_pct counts only servers the provider publishes. Prefer the latter.","skills_pct":0,"scopes_pct":17,"security_pct":99,"arazzo_pct":3,"rules_pct":17}}},"b":{"kind":"industry","slug":"banking","name":"Banking & Open Banking","members":922,"stats":{"kind":"industry","slug":"banking","name":"Banking & Open Banking","tier":"report","coverage":{"declared_members":925,"resolved_members":922,"scored_members":892,"agent_scored_members":892,"scored_share_pct":97,"unexamined_members":28,"enrichment_depth":{"mean_catalog_gap":76.9,"median_artifact_dirs":10,"n":892,"thinly_covered":792,"thinly_covered_of":892,"thin_coverage_note":"792 of 892 scored members had under half their catalog-attributable points satisfied at all (catalog_earned / catalog_max < 0.5). They are INCLUDED in the mean above. A large share here means the cohort mean is partly a measurement of how far our enrichment reached, not only of how these providers publish.","note":"Rubric points API Evangelist could add to the average member with no action by the providers, and the median count of artifact directories we hold on them. A cohort with a higher gap and thinner artifacts has been enriched less, so part of any difference between its mean and another cohort's is our coverage rather than the market. Compare two cohorts only when this figure is comparable. It is an upper bound on our backlog: it says who CAN close a gap, not who did."},"unexamined_note":"Excluded from the distribution: these carry a catalog-owned needs_work flag (never enriched, or no resolvable host). They are listed as members and keep their own page and score; they do not vote in the averages, because their score measures our coverage rather than their posture."},"sufficient":true,"kin_score":{"mean":25.4,"median":20.1,"min":0,"max":84.6,"stdev":18.3},"agent_readiness":{"mean":15.6,"median":6.4,"min":0,"max":65.8,"stdev":17.1},"band_distribution":{"exemplar":22,"strong":46,"developing":157,"thin":170,"emerging":239,"minimal":258},"facet_averages":{"discoverability":{"mean":61.6,"n":892},"contract_quality":{"mean":22.2,"n":892},"contract_governance":{"mean":8.6,"n":892},"operational_transparency":{"mean":14.6,"n":892},"developer_ergonomics":{"mean":27.7,"n":892},"access_clarity":{"mean":25.7,"n":892}},"adoption":{"mcp_pct":11,"mcp_first_party_pct":11,"mcp_note":"mcp_pct counts any mcp/ artifact including ones API Evangelist derived from the provider OpenAPI; mcp_first_party_pct counts only servers the provider publishes. Prefer the latter.","skills_pct":0,"scopes_pct":23,"security_pct":99,"arazzo_pct":2,"rules_pct":16}}},"comparable":true,"delta":{"kin_score_mean":3.9,"kin_score_median":8.4,"agent_readiness_mean":3.3,"facets":{"discoverability":1.4,"contract_quality":5.1,"contract_governance":0.1,"operational_transparency":3.2,"developer_ergonomics":6.2,"access_clarity":3.1},"adoption":{"mcp_pct":5,"mcp_first_party_pct":4,"mcp_note":null,"skills_pct":0,"scopes_pct":-6,"security_pct":0,"arazzo_pct":1,"rules_pct":1},"enrichment_depth":{"mean_catalog_gap":-1.5,"median_artifact_dirs":4}},"depth_confounded":true,"depth_note":"Payments & Money Movement scores 3.9 points higher than Banking & Open Banking AND is the better-enriched cohort: 1.5 points less catalog_gap and 4 more artifact directories on the median member. The market difference and our coverage difference point the same way, so this delta cannot be attributed to the markets on its own. Close the enrichment gap, or report both figures together."}

Result read 2026-10-27. Payments & Money Movement and Banking & Open Banking each have their own page with the full roster and leaderboard.

Run this comparison yourself

Everything above came from one call to compare_cohorts. Swap in any two tags, industries, regions, areas or VC portfolios and you get the same answer for your own shortlist. It is an Understanding tool, included in the Understanding and Influence plans, or pay per call.

From any MCP client connected to https://apis.io/mcp:
{"name": "compare_cohorts", "arguments": {"a": "industry:payments", "b": "industry:banking"}}
Over the REST API:
curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/cohorts/compare?a=industry:payments&b=industry:banking" \
  -H "X-API-Key: $APIS_IO_KEY"
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