Well, the theory is that you use technology to provide the same services that a traditional bank does, but you do it better because banks have notoriously shit

Well, the theory is that you use technology to provide the same services that a traditional bank does, but you do it better because banks have notoriously shit systems. The practice is often that you use technology to provide a half-arsed subset of the services that a traditional bank does, but you don't have a risk department so when there's a downturn in the market it turns out you're providing services to all the people a traditional bank didn't want to deal with for good reason.