As a social web application, the bank offers you all kinds of recommendations and value-added services based on analyzing your private data.
Does that sound crazy? Perhaps no more crazy than an empty box labeled “What are you doing?" sounded three years ago when software developer Alex Payne joined Twitter as its API lead, the position responsible for helping birth the famous ecosystem of outside developers building apps on top of Twitter. Today Payne announced that he's leaving Twitter to co-found an online banking startup with just such a vision, called BankSimple. BankSimple plans to launch to the public later this year; its website is currently down due to overwhelming interest after Payne's announcement.
Financial Industry Disruption
After Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey shifted his focus to Square, Payne becomes at least the second micro-messaging forefather to shift gears into the financial tech market.
BankSimple says it will be “an easy, intuitive, and social bank for people who appreciate simple online services." The company emphasizes its lack of fees, saying that other banks grew greedy when they moved beyond making money from interest on deposits.
The company says it will offer a mobile application to deposit checks by uploading a photo. Such practices are likely to become more common in the future - but they still feel very futuristic. Intuit is developing software to prepare simple tax filings by mobile photo upload, for example. Banking and personal finance are sectors expected to see major disruption in coming years, thanks largely to developments on the internet.
Analyst firm Gartner said last month that traditional online banking faces a serious challenge from a new class of service providers focused on more advanced financial operations than mere transactions.
