There are a number of things that banks can do to increase customers' faith in them, or to abuse that trust. Personally, trollface references don't affect my co

There are a number of things that banks can do to increase customers' faith in them, or to abuse that trust. Personally, trollface references don't affect my confidence in the bank's ability to protect my money. Things like conning mortgage applicants to take on loans that they could never possibly repay, or buying and selling CDOs and other shady financial instruments? Drops my confidence in that bank like a stone. That's not what BankSimple's doing here. I appreciate that BankSimple is a humane organization. I imagine that once they launch and start growing, there'll be hierarchies and levels of bureaucracy that will rise up and that will affect how they're able to relate to their users. But, honestly, trollface references don't bother me. So ... if I prefer humane organizations, why not go with a local bank? A quick story. I had an account with a local bank, opened by necessity when I got a mortgage with that bank. When we refinanced the mortgage elsewhere, I went in to the teller to close the account. She gave me a long-winded song-and-dance about how they could surely meet my banking needs and so on, and wouldn't I like to schedule a meeting to go over how they could best serve me? I replied that, no, I'd like to close the account. "Where will you store your money?" "I'm planning on putting it into an online bank." She then goes into another long-winded spiel about how important it is to be able to look people in the eye, and ... these are her words: "I really just could never bring myself to trust mister cyber-face." All other things being equal (and I doubt that'd be the case), I'd much rather bank with someone who knows about trollface than with someone who references online banking as "mister cyber-face."