A First Look at BankSimple

As someone who have worked a lot for banks and actually already done some of this work let me offer a viewpoint.<p>Last year my company managed to get a large Danish bank to implement tracking into their netbank. This is no small accomplishment, which anyone knowing just a little bit about how the IT departments in the banking industry normally works, the systems they work on are arcane.<p>It took us 18 months from getting the bank to like the idea into actually getting it launched.<p>The results have been nothing but extraordinary everyone loves it.<p>The reason they love it is because it's automatic. They get insights into their economy that they could not previously get. There is something quite amazing about seeing your spendings categorized for the first time without you having to do anything.<p>The banks have a unique identifier on each transaction that can be measured up against a category list. This is something Mint and Wesabe can't do because you can't export that unique identifer from the banks.<p>The big advantage of BankSimple and why I think it's going to be huge is because they don't have a legacy system to deal with.<p>In other words BankSimple can potentially be anything you could ever dream of a bank being, because BankSimple will be able to cross reference the data in order to provide not just cost reduction but service improvement.<p>The banking industry are just waiting to be disrupted by someone like BS. There are thousands of ways to create a better banking experience. BS is a good first stab at it IMHO.

Does anybody actually think this way? As in, do people actually go to their bank's website because they'd like to spend money and want to find out how much they have to spend?<p>Described this way, this just seems like a tool to facilitate a fundamentally unhealthy way to think about your money. If you're thinking in terms of "How much can I spend today", you've already lost. (Unless, of course, you're 23, in which case your entire goal in life should be to sock away enough money that you never need to ask that question again in relation to food/rent/etc.)<p>I like the transaction searching capabilities shown in the demo, but I was hoping to see more info on how to do actual "banking" tasks. Can I initiate a wire transfer from an internet cafe in Laos? Can people send a check to an address in the US that automatically gets deposited in my account? That sort of thing. When these guys came on the scene, I got the impression that that was the kind of thing they'd be doing better than other banks. Frankly, sorting my past transactions just isn't a problem I desperately need to have solved.

Here is where I <i>hope</i>/<i>pray</i>/etc BankSimple is going:<p>I want a personal financial API for myself. If you want to bill me for something, you don't write down a bunch of text on a piece of paper, stick that inside of another piece of paper, and then pay somebody to put it through a slot in my door (along with all of the coupon mailers, prepaid credit card offers, and VOTE FOR ME! envelopes that I get), you call up blhack's financial API and request a payment from it.<p>When this happens, I get an email, or an SMS, or whatever else telling me:<p>"USBank has requested a payment of $347 from you. They have requested payment by October 20th, 2011 -- Note: Car Payment"<p>or<p>"City of Tempe has requested a payment of $60 from you. They have requested payment by October 8th, 2011 -- Note: Water Bill"<p>etc. etc.<p>I can log into BankSimple and approve these payment requests (just like paypal, except [hopefully] BankSimple makes it affordable for my city, or my auto loan provider to do use).<p>It's an accountant for me. Except it's in one place, and it doesn't cost anything. There are companies that have tried this, and failed miserably, mostly because they appear to lack the technical expertise that something like BankSimple is bringing to the table.<p>The banking system, right now, is a disaster. The things I'm describing are all possible right now, but they're an enormous pain in the ass to use.<p>BankSimple: if you're <i>not</i> doing this, do it.

US consumer banking is archaic and can't be fixed with just another bank. The whole process is broken and it requires an industry change.<p>I applaud BankSimple for what they are doing but in the big picture it doesn't solve the major problems.<p>My biggest gripes with the banks:<p>- Can't wire money to someone else without going into the bank and paying ridiculous fees (Last time I checked, $25 for domestic, $45 for international). INGDirect attempts to make this better but the receiver still needs to have an email address and go through a procedure to receive the money. It's also slow, average is 2-3 days.<p>- It's easier and cheaper for me to use checks. It costs me nothing to deposit it but I have to pay a fee to receive a wire transfer. Wires have a lot fever errors than checks and a wire of over $5k doesn't have to be put on hold because the bank has to verify a check. The banks punish you for using wires instead of checks.<p>- When you go online and use bill pay the bank will pay a 3rd party to print and mail a check!! How is this electronic payment. (This does not apply to large firms like the phone company which will receive the payment electronically but small business can't utilize this!)<p>- Why no IBAN? Swift requires intermediary banks which charge a fee on your international wire.<p>- No chips on debpit/credit cards. In Europe most banks issue cards with chips on them. This would eliminate the risk of getting skimmed if only the US would also start using chips instead of the magnetic stripe.<p>I just don't understand why the banks do this. Someone enlighten me.

Some questions I never bothered to actually ask of my current banking system probably because I've known people that had accounts with them and have seen several branch locations but I'd like to ask of BankSimple.<p>BankSimple is a bank account yes or no? I mean a real certified banking system? Are they required to meet governmental guidelines of official banks?<p>What guarantee (if any) do I have that my money will be there in the morning? Is there some guarantee that if I go to login to bankSimple tomorrow morning and the domain doesn't resolve emails get bounced etc, would there be any recourse for me? [again, never bothered to ask that of my real bank but I suppose a brick and mortar institution instills more confidence]<p>Visa, MasterCard, Amex... Is the bankSimple card backed by any of these institutions? Can I walk into to some random QuickStop gas station and pay using your card like I could with my current bank card?<p>What kind of development and testing infrastructure do you guys utilize? Are you able to roll out updates to limited groups of real users so you can test changes on a small scale before rolling them out to every one? I'm more curious as to this aspect because I attribute to BankSimple more of a website or new software company [which I envision bugs and glitches that get worked out with feedback] rather than a traditional bank [which surprisingly even though I know is capable of making mistakes, I don't really worry about bugs]<p>Will BankSimple eventually if not at launch do other bank-y things like consumer loans, offer savings bonds, etc?<p>What about fraud protection? What if some one steals my card and buys a bunch of stuff with it? [Ok, I've asked my bank about this one at least]

I don't get it. I don't get the point of it. Searching through a list of things? How is that making my banking simpler?<p>It seems to have turned into a credit card statement search &#38; visualisation engine.

I haven't followed news about BankSimple, and the firs few minutes of the demo I watched didn't help me understand what it is. Is BankSimple an actual bank (with ATM card, routing numbers, etc.)? Or is it a PayPal competitor? Or is it just a front end that interacts with Banks? Going to BankSimple.com, it seems like it's trying to be an actual bank. But the demo on the website made it seem more like a Mint competitor. So, BankSimple is just another bank but with a potentially super-awesome website? So far, I'm not convinced.

Seems like Wesabe hooked up to the bank network.<p>Search and categorized transactions are cool, but does the categorization require manual tagging? I'm pressed for time in my day, and I am not going to spend more than 5 minutes to look at my bank statements, unless I'm specifically sitting down to budget. My biggest concern with a service like this is the time it's asking from you. So many services designed to "make my life simpler" actually require spending more time than just not using the service at all. For that reason, your mobile app needs to be killer.

It's a beautifully clean design. I like the simplicity of it.<p>What I worry about is the security behind the scenes and the sharing of sensitive information between BankSimple and the banks.<p>And trademarking "Safe-To-Spend"? Come on... It's a math equation that shows how much running profit you have. You don't need to trademark such a thing unless you intend to use it in advertising or throughout the website, yet I only see it used in one place. Next thing you know it'll be patented.<p>Maybe I missed it in the video, but what I would like to see from any of these types of websites is a consolidated view of multiple accounts and banks. So if I have chequing and savings accounts at 3 different banks, I would like a dashboard of my entire spending and saving. It's easy to lose sight of this when you look at individual bank statements.

I love it. It works just like my brain does.<p>Sadly (for me) it also works just like my iPhone App "Payday" does (without the live bank ability) that was released last year and then sank without a trace (albeit partly due to a silly bug).<p>Being able to earmark money for bills in advance and set yourself saving goals is really cool (and was also the core feature of Payday).<p>If anyone would like to try these features before the release of Bank Simple you can find it here:<p><a href="http://toccame.com/" rel="nofollow">http://toccame.com/</a><p>and here<p><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/payday/id351013628" rel="nofollow">http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/payday/id351013628</a><p>Just beware of a small bug that makes the calculations go off if you choose the last day of the month as Payday. <i>(Yeah. I know. Sadly the talented programmer I worked with has had to move onto other projects. Maybe one day we can fix it. sigh)</i>

Safe-to-spend balance is great but will it be enforced? I currently calculate my safe to spend balance but nothing stops me from over spending. I don't have the willpower. It would be great if the bank simple card will only let me spend my safe-to-spend balance. So if my safe-to-spend balance is $20 and I go to an ATM and try to withdraw $50, it will decline.

I am excited by the 'how much can I spend' feature and NLP search. And this is the first bank that I would consider moving to. However, my current bank, rather a credit union is absolutely phenomenal in terms of online banking. I have had quite a few different banks accounts in my young life and am very impressed by the level of innovation from a relatively small institution.<p>My credit union is UW Credit Union. They have recently launched an updated version of their site as well as previously included Mint like features. It is great. I feel as though that as soon as UW Credit Union gets wind of BS, if they haven't already, will incorporate some of what BS is doing.<p>Banking is definitely an industry ready to be disrupted.

So I'm getting more interested in banking and accounting, largely because a friend and I are starting a business for the first time. When I saw "Accounting for Computer Scientists" on HN (<a href="http://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for-computer-scientists.html" rel="nofollow">http://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for-comput...</a>) it was a revelation to me, because I didn't realize that accounting could be so cleanly modeled as a graph structure.<p>Ever since then I've been itching to create some git-like software for accounting, where you have a repository of accounts and transactions. I feel like there is so much unexplored territory here in terms of analysis and visualization. For example, I want a way of saying "this insurance bill is for six months of coverage" and then seeing my bi-weekly breakdown of expenses include two weeks worth of that insurance bill. I want to be able to tag expenses as non-discretionary (taxes), periodic (mortgage), or discretionary (latte) as an easy way of understanding my overall cash flow. I want to be able to amortize my vacations over the whole year. etc.<p>I want to be able to view what my hypothetical cash flow would be if I cut out certain periodic expenses or added others.<p>A lot of this is probably more complicated than what most people would want to do -- that's why I think the important part is having a standard repository model that's easily programmable.

This is something that people would want. But I have a question about business model choice here, because I'm curious why they chose to become a front-end to various banks in this way.<p>Why choose to be a middle-man here (with all of the pain/cost of providing customer service, etc.) when they could be an enterprise software vendor or a SaaS provider? Banks don't actually make that much off of depositors, right? I'm not saying they made a bad choice; I wanted to see if anyone could rationalize it for me.<p>Surely banks (especially smaller regional banks and credit unions) would pay good prices to have this software power their banking websites so that they could care for their customers in a more sophisticated way. Right now my credit union, in the Bay Area, has a functional but very ugly e-banking and bill-pay platform which has clearly been purchased from a third party vendor and customized (checkfree, I think (<a href="http://www.checkfreecorp.com/cda/corp/L5.jsp?layoutId=51501&#38;contentId=140&#38;menuId=47774&#38;pId=50062" rel="nofollow">http://www.checkfreecorp.com/cda/corp/L5.jsp?layoutId=51501&...</a>).<p>I guess I don't understand where significant revenues will come from in a model like this.

One of the reasons I ditched Mint was because it was 2-3 days laggy due to having to scrape and process the data from my bank. I have yet to find anything that beats simply recording all my expenditures in a spiral notebook and reconciling it with my bank's online account once a day. That, plus "When I get paid, I pay my bills first". How simpler could it be? (Frost Bank in Texas, here)

Nice looking site! Why did you not use any green in the UI? For example the direct deposit of $100 is black and doesn't stand out too much, whereas if it was a nice green I immediately can make a correlation. For the users emotion's, seeing a sea of green transactions could evoke more happiness compared to black. A green background on the "Safe-To-Spend" section seems more intuitive than a red one, perhaps it can turn red as it gets close to a 'danger zone' of spending (Calculated based on their spending habits/frequency).<p>Lastly, everyone keeps mentioning that categorization is very important, yet categorization isn't that noticeable. I did not notice it until you demoed it. I might have found it on my own fairly easily if I wasn't being demo'd though, so its somewhat unfair to say. Rather than having users create very common categories (food, rent, transportation) make those default and more visible whether it be adding inset icons, or changing position/color of that section.<p>Great job! :)

I had thought that BankSimple was slimming down the traditional banking model and passing the savings (in the form of interest) to customers. I still love that they're tackling Goliaths but they need to be a little clearer on their vision and value proposition.

Very interesting. I like the concept of having only one account. The goals tab looks very useful.<p>The video states that the "safe to spend" feature calculates recurring bills and such. Is there a way to view and manage these?

IMO<p>Banks should be good at doing one thing. Holding my liquid assets. However, history has proven to us that even that is a challenge for banks. Where banks thrive in size, most banks lack in vision. I believe that banks are not software companies, at least not in spirit. Some banks are better at utilizing technology and others are not.<p>My challenge to BankSimple: prove me wrong.<p>We have to remember what a bank traditionally is, break that down, and build it from the ground up without the walls that immobilizes it today.

Love the design! While I think there is quite a ways to go, I will most certainly give BankSimple a shot when it is publicly released.<p>Upon seeing the video though, specifically when he was searching through for the bar that he went to, I started wondering how long it'll take before we can actually see precisely what we paid for at said location rather than having to dig through receipts.<p>I have no idea when that time will come, but when it does, I'll welcome it with open arms.

I imagine this is a US only Bank?

I'm quite happy with my bank's customer service, interest rates and fees. And I use Mint.com to get a view of all accounts including retirement, investments, etc.<p>So, from my view, BankSimple just does not provide enough value. Hopefully for BankSimple's sake, others are not satisfied like I am.

Now that I'm getting a better feel of what BankSimple is about, I don't think it's that revolutionary an idea. I'm not even sure I will use it. Most of what they showed, and more can be accomplished using Mint. And, Mint offers more choice by being an aggregator.

Shouldn't the Safe To Spend have changed when you scheduled 20 buck a payment to adam?

One thing I love is that I can have checks mailed to Bank Simple, and they'd automatically deposit the monies in my account.<p>I get quite a few checks, but not enough that I'd want to get a check scanning machine for.<p>I'm on the beta list, and hope for an invite.

Looks awesome. I would love to see a clone of BankSimple in India. The bureaucracy will be a pain but if you can successfully navigate it and create a simple no-frills online only bank, it will be a great success.

Wake me up when they have the deposit-from-phone working on Android phones.

Neat. Now gear up for some honest feedback on your blurb :)<p>&#62;A First Look at BankSimple<p>FB: Ok, though "Sneak Peek" is easier to relate to than "First Look".<p>&#62;Joshua Reich, Wed September 21, 2011<p>FB: Ok.<p>&#62;We’ve been very cautious on our blog and website about &#62;talking about what we’ve been building.<p>FB: Redundant. Why are you telling me you've been "cautious"?<p>&#62;Instead, we’ve focused on our vision.<p>FB: What vision? Mention it. Mention the key value proposition.<p>&#62; Today that is changing: Below is a first public sneak peek of BankSimple. We think it’s far more powerful to show than tell.<p>FB: Check capitalization. Focus on what the user is getting is getting, rather than what you feel("we think it's far..")<p>&#62;And now we are ready to show. We’ve been testing the product for a few months now, and it has been awesome. &#62;The product isn’t finished. It will never be finished. We’re constantly improving. But we’ve now reached the &#62;point where we’ve learned as much as possible from testing internally and in a few weeks we’ll be shipping &#62; &#62;cards to our first real customers.<p>FB: Mostly redundant. Only thing that's relevant is "We’ve successfully tested the product for a few months now, and are looking forward to ship it to our first customers over the next few weeks. (Click here to request a beta invite.)"<p>&#62;This is only the beginning, but it is a tremendous step forward for our company.<p>FB: This line might be good for boosting the morale at a company internal meeting, but it means nothing to the customer. Also it seems to reinforce the idea that you're not ready yet to grab my attention.<p>&#62;We will be sharing more important updates with you soon,<p>FB: Maybe be a little more specific than "soon"? "over the next couple of weeks"?<p>&#62; but in the meantime,<p>FB: OK<p>&#62;we hope that you enjoy this first look at our product –<p>FB: Redundant. What's there to enjoy?<p>&#62;we’d love to hear your feedback.<p>FB: This looks like a call to action, with no visible action button. What should the user do to provide feedback? Maybe turn the "feedback" word at the end of the sentence to a hyperlink that points to a feedback page? Or better yet, use something lightweight like <a href="http://webengage.com/" rel="nofollow">http://webengage.com/</a> (disclaimer: it's made by a friend of mine).

I was surprised to see that they put so much emphasis on the searching in the demo. The real value is in the "Goals" interface - which is well designed.

BankSimple is as someone else pointed out, just a simpler, sleeker interface to banking.<p>Brett King's Movenbank tries to reinvent banking.

sure, there's some cool stuff in here. but is it really enough to make anyone but a geek go through the hassle of adding yet another banking service? probably not, imo.

The value proposition doesn't appeal to me... Slick GUI, and I'm sure you guys work your asses off, but there's no compelling reason for me to switch to another bank.. that's a huge cost.. I am get off my ass to another bank, tell them to close my account, write a huge check to BankSimple, change my direct deposit, buy new checks, etc... Do you guys replace the checkbook? If so, I'll sign up. That's my main problem with the entire banking process. I hate writing checks and signing checks. When I write a check to the IRS and somehow get a single number wrong, I have to rewrite the whole thing. It seems strangely ancient that we still have this process in place today.

My two words of advice to BankSimple (well, two acronyms):<p>API and CLI