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BankSimple Launches Preview Site
- Andrenid 16y agoI'm very excited to see how this pans out. Even though i'm not a country they're going to support, if they do well it will set a good precedent and maybe we can finally see banking stirred up a bit. Banks are my most hated companies as a whole.
- Dramatize 16y agoWhat countries will they support?
- abp 16y agoThe US. For the time being, we are concentrating on the US market. Banking regulation and service levels vary widely around the world. After we launch in the US, we may look at international expansion.
- HectorRamos 16y agoHere's hoping that it works in Puerto Rico. I'm sure BankSimple trusts Banco Popular :)
- x0ner 16y agoAnyone else having issues signing up for the beta?
- jakarta 16y agoI'm still trying to nail the business model here. "BankSimple account plus BankSimple debit card replaces your existing personal bank account. Make deposits, withdraw cash, pay bills, earn interest, and more. However, BankSimple is not a "bank." We partner with chartered banks who provide FDIC-insured products, leaving us free to concentrate on designing the complete consumer banking experience, via the web and your smartphone." From the looks of it, it appears as if Bank Simple is going to be gathering deposits for the actual banks they partner with. In exchange, those deposits will be fenced in and administered by Bank Simple via the online and mobile presence. The mention of debit cards at first made me think that maybe they would be able to split fees, so Bank Simple would get a cut of the interchange fees that occur whenever a debit card is used... but those fees will go away because of the Durbin Amendment (this is putting the squeeze on every major bank in the US and will result in an increase in fees for customers -- see Jamie Dimon's comments at the recent Barclays Conference). Maybe the partner banks will split some of the interest they make off of the deposits? Presumably, Bank Simple's value proposition to them would be that they are providing something that is slightly more than zero cost funding but less than a CD rate. So they could earn a little bit in that area. The only thing that is left then, that I could think of, is that Bank Simple will mainly try to make money by cross-selling products. Bank Simple Brokerage Accounts. Bank Simple Mutual Funds. Bank Simple Pre-Paid Debit Cards. That sort of thing, where they'd be able to gain market share. This would work out pretty well I think. For reference, the average American uses 16 different financial products, with about 2 products per bank. A good bank like Wells Fargo boasts a ratio of 5.5-6 products per customer. Your typical bank earns its money on an 80/20 split, where 80% comes from the interest spread (borrow at 3%, lend at 6%, net 3%) and 20% comes from fees (overdraft, interchange, fees for other products). But a trust bank will have a 60/40 split, where they earn extra fees by offering wealth management services to the majority of their wealthy customers.
- chrisgoodrich 16y agofrom the FAQ (https://www.banksimple.com/faq/ https://www.banksimple.com/faq/) > If you don’t charge hidden fees, how do you make money? We make money from two sources: interchange and interest margin. Interest margin is the revenue earned from lending, less what they pay on deposits. For example a bank may charge a customer 12% to borrow money, but pay 5% interest on a savings account. The difference, less any defaults on the loan, is revenue to the bank. Interchange is a small revenue source that card issuing banks earn whenever that card is used at a store. Typically banks earn less than 1% for each time the card is used to make a purchase. These are both great revenue streams, but banks got greedy and started charging additional fees to bolster their revenue. Without hundreds or thousands of branches, our operation is low cost, so we don’t need to rely on extraneous fee revenue.
- csomar 16y agoIs this going to support third-world countries? Will I be able to sign up and get the card and bank account running?
- SupremumLimit 16y agoThe FAQ says they'll concentrate on the US market initially.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoI'm just curious - what exactly is banksimple selling? Just regular banking + better UI?
- abp 16y agoDoesn't https://www.banksimple.com/faq/ https://www.banksimple.com/faq/ answer your question? Also, as they offer at the end of the faq: Why haven’t you answered X? If there is anything you’d like answered, feel free to shoot us an email at hello@banksimple.com.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoMy bad, I didn't see the FAQ. I didn't even realize their page scrolled, I was navigating it sideways via their tabs ("putting people first", "no surprise fees", etc) rather than vertically.
- abp 16y agoAh i see. It's an interesting navigation concept. :)
- dschobel 16y agoThe same way Zappos just sells shoes? A nice UI, efficient operations and customer service which doesn't actively hate you can make a pretty compelling value proposition.
- phlux 16y agoTrue, but we all have such a sour taste from our experience with all banks that we are rightly a little squeamish to the concept. I think the subconscious reaction is "yeah right, trust another banker?" This got me: "...designing the complete consumer banking experience, via the web and your smartphone.." I am not sure how good this will be, I mean, credit unions were supposed to be the answer to big banks issues - but they are largely aggregating under umbrella ownership as well. Their overdraft fees are a large percentage of their revenue (mine for example advertises the $500K per month they take in in overdraft fees as a primary asset directly on the wall in front of the tellers (Valley Credit Union)) --- What people really need is fundamental help with managing their spending and finances. Though the following is overly complex, for illustration imagine the following: You bring home $10K per month. You allocate a particular budget online. But you have certain cards for certain classifications which are allotted a % of your spending budget after certain bills are accounted for (rent, utils, ins, legal req's (child support/tuition, etc). These cards can only be used for the intended purpose. You'd have a "Food card", "Car card", "Entertainment card" etc... The types of cards, their budget % and what not could be based off understanding you spending needs, habits and goals dependent on your history and other factors that you've already been measuring through the use of Mint. And manually set based on your own preferences. The "food card" works at any grocery, restaurant, cafe, etc (based on the establishments profile ID in Mint, as an example) -- but will not work at Kragen, the gas station, etc.. This system could be used to teach people to allocate funds to a bucket - and ideally prevent them from over spending. (Sure, there will be plenty of people on HN who will say "PSHAW! only an idiot would need to have such granular control over their spending - look at me, I don't spend beyond my means, blah blah blah" -- but there are literally HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people who DO -- thus all the financial issues that people have, and the preying on such people that many financial institutions, rent-to-own etc type establishments that exist. There really is a deep need for material hand-holding in financial issues in the world. Hand-holding to a degree that some people don't want or need, but many many others do. If the system could have a measurable view; such as it requires that you select a >5% savings number that is not as easily accessed (e.g. like transferring from your savings to checking whimsically) and that gives you a constant and real-time view of your credit rating, payment standing and history on credit-based accounts etc... With incentive offerings to provide a bit of gamification to the entire service "Pay your X bill on time for N months and get Y months free Z service", automatically - without the user required to do anything. Rewards on brand loyalty simply built into their purchases, integrated group coupons for the users of the financial training instruments etc... There is a serious and deep need for a pivot of the entire financial industry that differs from the centuries old taking that the industry is known for, and there is a universe of room for innovation in this area....
- benmccann 16y agoI like new design. Very cool. Good luck guys.
- justinchen 16y agoWhen I first started scrolling I got a little confused b/c I didn't realize the header was fixed. The sign up button disappeared and I couldn't figure out how to get it back.
- nailer 16y agoYeah I find it confusing too. It didn't feel like I was scrolling down, just covering the sign in page. It's weird and non-simple.
- d2viant 16y agoI'm not sold on the idea of having all content combined into a single page. It's awkward to navigate, but an interesting choice nonetheless.
- muffinman2010 16y agoLooks great, but scrolling is choppy on my computer
- nathanwdavis 16y agoIt's unclear what Bank Simple actually is. Hopefully (for their sake) it will be clear when they launch.
- abp 16y agoDoesn't https://www.banksimple.com/faq/ https://www.banksimple.com/faq/ help?
- nathanwdavis 16y agoI didn't see a link to the FAQ anywhere. I see now it is a small link at the very bottom. Regardless, I still don't see what the great value proposition is other than that they are friendly. My bank (a small local bank) has never charged me a overdraft fee, never had to wait more than a minute, and I can only remember one time that I paid an ATM fee. I must have just been lucky enough to get one of the non-evil banks.
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 16y agoHi, I’m Allen. I’m an employee at BankSimple. We think that’s great. In the past, we’ve shown animosity toward banks without too much distinction. In retrospect, this might’ve been a mistake. Hopefully, we’re a refuge for resentful and puzzled customers of a certain subset of national banks rather than a competitor to a non-profit credit union. We wholly realize the necessary and worthy function that credits unions fulfill that neither we nor any national bank could accomplish. While we realize we might not be the right fit for some customers, we believe we’ll be a worthwhile alternative for many others. Lastly, I’ve personally spent a significant amount of time thinking about ways in which BankSimple and other financial service startups could further bolster credit union adoption and satisfaction to better pursue their mission (e.g. opening financial research to nonprofits and academics or technology sharing). I’d love to hear from anyone who has thoughts on this.
- blasdel 16y agoIt's a bit hasty to read that into his comment and break out the copypasta keyed under "credit unions" There's plenty of small local banks that are non-evil, at least until they get swallowed up by progressively more dastardly banks in a long chain of semi-annual M&A transactions.
- Qz 16y agoThe signup form doesn't work if you use autocomplete to enter your name and email address. Had to delete random letters and retype them to get the button to light up.
- jsdalton 16y agoYeah, they are probably using the javascript change event to trigger the enabling of that submit button. Unfortunately, most autocomplete functions don't trigger the change event. It's a real pain; you end up having to poll the form fields for changes and then trigger the change event manually.
- oomkiller 16y agoI always add autocomplete="off" to my inputs, cuts down on this type of thing.
- Qz 16y agoThat would just annoy me more, I use autocomplete wherever and whenever -- any site that doesn't let me autocomplete something that should be autocomplete-able always gets on my nerves.
- adambyrtek 16y agoDisabling an useful feature in order to make coding slightly easier seems a bit backwards.
- puredemo 16y agoHad the same issue and thought the form was just broken until I saw your comment. This is probably losing them a lot of signups.
- tobysterrett 16y agoThis should be working much better now, thanks for all the feedback on this. If you're interested we just open sourced the MooTools class that handles the validation - https://github.com/BankSimple/ValidateSimple https://github.com/BankSimple/ValidateSimple
- julius 16y agoThe site has an easter egg. Keyboard navigation: Try j,k,Esc,1-7 (its explained at the bottom of the page)
- KirinDave 16y agoThe keyboard nav isn't really an easter egg. HINT: The site does have two easter eggs. I'll spoil one; try clicking in the far top left of the guilloche background. Didn't you wonder how we got the page to load so fast with such a huge image?
- blaines 16y agoNice! I see some mootools? Is that a standard feature or something specially awesome? I really like their site, they put a lot of effort in it and it shows. Good work!
- blasdel 16y agoThe unminified js with comments is public: https://www.banksimple.com/js/brawndo.js https://www.banksimple.com/js/brawndo.js
- blasdel 16y agoThat's just canvas, it's no surprise. The four seperate webfonts as data URIs are bigger than that canvas would have been as an image anyway. Try typing <script into one of the signup fields for the real easter egg!
- Lewisham 16y agoI'd pay for Mint + Bank in a single package. It looks great. However, it's hard not to be a little disconcerted when the "meet the team" bit doesn't have a single person who has any sort of financial title like "accounts manager" or anything. It's just a group of devs. That doesn't scream "we know finances" it screams "we know how to make web apps, hope you trust us with money too... it can't be that hard, right?" Mint got away with this by simply being a front-end, and never touching your money. BankSimple should try a little harder to prove that it's not just a company that can identify why banks suck (not all that hard, really), but a company that can actually be relied upon to safely handle your money. * I know that BankSimple are putting all your money into an FDIC bank, but as the intermediary and the company you are doing business with, the buck stops with them (pun somewhat intended)
- donpark 16y agoBankSimple is not a bank. Think of them as a user-friendly GUI over a group of banks. As to where money actually gets deposited, it probably depends on which bank offers the best deal at any given time.
- mey 16y agoDoesn't mean that GUI doesn't have control of your financial interactions, moving your financial accounts between underlying banks, or being involved in any of the interchanges (ACH/Debit/Credit Rails, etc)
- joevandyk 16y agoYour statement confuses me. Are you suggesting that GUI has control?
- steveklabnik 16y agoThat is how I understand it to work, yes.
- cosmicray 16y ago> As to where money actually gets deposited, it probably depends on which bank offers the best deal at any given time. Is this what is referred to in the industry as a 'brokered deposit' ?
- callmeed 16y agoMy email has a . before the @ and was deemed invalid ...
- city41 16y agoYou mean like foo.bar@mail.com? Mine does too (most gmail addys do), and it worked. It did say my email address was invalid, but focusing and unfocusing the textbox fixed it. I don't think it's an issue with the email format, just the form is buggy.
- scotje 16y agoUnless it has changed recently, Gmail ignores the dots anyway. So if you find a form that wont validate your john.smith@gmail.com, you can use johnsmith@gmail.com and still receive it.
- rms 16y agoIn the meanwhile, I've been very happy with Charles Schwab's checking account. Free as in beer, you're allowed to overdraft with no overdraft fees, free ATM fees at all ATMs (including international!)
- marketer 16y agoDitto. I ditched Bank of America and switched to Schwab, it's great.
- ndaiger 16y agoYeah, me too. And when I've called customer service, it has always been fantastic. I've never felt like the rep has just been reading a script.
- masterj 16y agoI just opened a checking account with Schwab (and the requisite brokerage account that goes along with it). As I was registering the account online, the web system threw an error, and I couldn't finish. The next day I got a voicemail from one of their operators inquiring about my account with a number to call him back. The number went straight to him, and my account was straightened out in a few minutes. They also sent me checks, something I had never bothered paying for with my account at Chase. And I haven't even put any money in the account yet. So far I'm very impressed.
- dkasper 16y agoAnother happy Schwab customer here. I've got secondary accounts at ING and they're great too.
- corin_ 16y agoHas been said before but: if it was available in the UK, I'd sign up in an instant.
- simonista 16y agoGood work guys. A few text/spelling errors you might want to fix. On the careers page after clicking for more detail in the "smart and talented?" section, there are about 5 places where two words are getting smushed together. Maybe a line break problem or something. And then in the thank you email after signing up, the first line, "thank you requesting ..." should be "thank you for requesting ..."
- wyclif 16y agoI also noticed that right away and sent a heads-up to @al3x on Twitter about an hour before I saw the story hit HN.
- tobysterrett 16y agoThanks, good catches. I just fixed the email text, and the job listing should be getting fixed soon as well.
- jamn 16y agoI got a message from BankSimple telling me that I was going to get an invite soon and asking me for feedback. I got really excited and responded with an e-mail, but never heard back from them. I'm not sure if I misinterpreted the original e-mail, but this was a huge letdown. Did this happen to anyone else? In any case, best of luck to BankSimple. I can't wait to actually get to try the service. :)
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 16y agoIf possible, resend the e-mail. I'll look into it.
- jond2062 16y agoThis bank "overlay" concept appears to be very similar to what SmartyPig (http://www.smartypig.com http://www.smartypig.com) has been doing for a couple years. The revenue model is slightly different (SmartyPig partners with retailers to offer cash back bonuses to customers if they convert their savings goal into a retailer gift card or load it on to the SmartyPig Cash Rewards Card), but the general model of leveraging existing banks for client deposits is the same. I will be interested to see how competitive BankSimple's interest rates are and if they can differentiate themselves in a meaningful way from the many great online banks that already exist (INGDirect, Ally, etc.).
- clofresh 16y agoSSL. Respect.
- nailer 16y agoIndeed. But I wish the certificate had 'BankSimple' rather than 'Simple Finance Technology Corp'. Who the hell are they? (rhetorical)
- irons 16y agoThe first time I connected, Safari 5.0.3 threw an invalid-issuer SSL warning. Can't seem to reproduce it, though.
- haribilalic 16y agoI understand it's not the only thing behind BankSimple, but I'd love to see that UI on top of my current Internet banking.
- spolsky 16y agoI'm wondering how they got around the state banking laws requiring them to be a chartered bank if they want to use the word "Bank" in their name (for example, in New York, Banking Law Section 132). All the confusion in this forum as to whether they are actually a "bank" makes me think they may not yet have heard of these laws...
- i2pi 16y agoWe have certainly heard of that law and similar rulings and are in fairly regular contact with the regulators. BankSimple is the name of our product, our company is Simple Finance Technology Corp. (rolls off the tongue...) There is plenty of precedent for our situation - not being a chartered bank but having 'bank' in our product name and URL. BankFreedom, BankRate, FindABetterBank, etc. Not comparable businesses, but face similar issues. IANAL, but, by god, we pay them handsomely to deal with this and many other banking issues.
- rkwz 16y agoAlex talks about BankSimple and more in this podcast. http://thisdeveloperslife.com/post/1475231255/1-0-7-audacity http://thisdeveloperslife.com/post/1475231255/1-0-7-audacity
- jaywalker 16y agoOnly for the US
- arithmetic 16y agoI love the UI for signing up for an account (the bank check-like interface). That's a nice touch.
- vamsee 16y agoOk, probably this might be a bit beside the point, but I really liked the red-tinted logo. The new blue one looks boring. I'm guessing "blue signifies stability" or some reasoning for that, but still, the old logo looked much more distinctive.
- joshuacc 16y agoLove the reference to Joseph Schumpeter in the debit card image. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter
- marcamillion 16y agoI guess it is a testament to how messed up the banking industry is, that I actually dream (quite literally in my case) about the launch of this bank/site. The most annoying thing is that I don't live in the US any more, so even when this launches I won't be able to partake - but I have been longing for tech entrepreneurs to take a stab at some 'traditional' foundational businesses. Banking is one of those things that really needs some TLC. Plus, there doesn't have to be branches. We need a bank for tech entrepreneurs. Not just based in the US dammit.