APIs to retrieve extra data about financial transactions (UK)

Question

Are there any APIs available in the UK to allow someone to look up the transaction code (company name that appears in your bank statements) and get extra information about that transaction.

For example, if I had a transaction at a petrol station it could see that the transaction was for a petrol station and suggest the category to be "Vehicle Fuel" or something like that?

Must be able to specifically handle data from UK businesses.

Answer 1

I think what you're referring to is 'Transaction Description'.

This data is completely controlled by the organisation which debits the account so there is no standard, also some organisations also include transaction details in this making lookups extremely complex. Some examples below:

Shell Petrol Station CD 5487 < Includes last four digits of card
Some Restaurant 15/10 < Includes date
Google Apps Tran #16598745 < Includes transaction code

There are some sites that have an ability to search these transaction descriptions but I think these are user contributed, there is no official source as far as I'm aware.