Starting a new bank - if only it were that simple. I actually looked into the requirements for establishing a new bank (not in US) and the requirements were so

Starting a new bank - if only it were that simple. I actually looked into the requirements for establishing a new bank (not in US) and the requirements were so prohibitive (tens of millions in reserve from day one, virtually obliged that no single shareholder hold more than 5-10% stake), not to mention meeting regulatory requirements like BASEL in Europe and SOX in the US mean that the big banks own the market in many countries, with no fear of swifter moving newcomers "eating their lunch". Not to mention people's resistance to change, especially with something as important as their money. And that is only on the retail banking side. It's even worse in i-banking, with the bigger investment banks making more money than ever on Wall Street, as if the crash of 2008 never happened. They may be crooks, but they have the money and influence to make sure the laws get written in their favour - see https://www.banksimple.net/blog/2010/07/21/banks-strike-back/ https://www.banksimple.net/blog/2010/07/21/banks-strike-back... (there was an article on HN recently around this post.) Also looked into providing the "valuable services" you mention too, a la Mint.com (no equivalent where I live) and this is something I believe there is certain potential (you will have to build a service that taps into banks online portals and offers more useful features than the banks themselves, e.g. account aggregation, financial product comparisons, tailored financial advice etc.) I think the future is one where virtually ordinary transactions will be done online (paying bills, transferring funds), possibly on smartphones, and where you only go into a branch to get a mortgage or something major - and possibly not even then. Of course you can do all this already online, but the world is still very cash and cheque based outside of the US. It will be a while yet until the majority of people are willing to do 100% of their banking with an institution that is 100% web-based.