Got it. In that frame, Square and Varo Money would be challenger banks (that got started as neobanks) because they now have licenses. Chime, Sofi and others wou

Got it. In that frame, Square and Varo Money would be challenger banks (that got started as neobanks) because they now have licenses. Chime, Sofi and others would be neobanks, correct? Never thought of this distinction, but I don't hate it. I think a material distinction between Apple/Amazon etc and Alibaba is that in Alibaba's operating environment there wasn't a strong digital financial ecosystem to compete with (not to mention that they were a national champion). I'm not convinced they all can do exactly the same thing Alibaba did. Apple is edging it's way there and doing it in an original way, but they're not doing it in a way that is in line with what I described at all (for example, if Apple were pursuing a vertical neobank strategy, they would launch a banking service for appstore developers, who AFAIK are the only customer segment for whom Apple is an income driver). For Amazon it could be sellers, for Google it could be Adsense advertisers, and I'm not sure what the equivalent would be for Facebook. I also think a reason these folks havent gone the lending route (other than Amazon) is because I don't know if its believable that their data could be differentiated for lending purposes. Just a thought.