Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter's Alex Payne quits, heads onto something new.

al3x.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 166 posts

Re: Twitter's Alex Payne quits, heads onto something new.

#81

Post by ryanhuff »

dfranke wrote: post #52
ihodes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I'll be using it first, and lots of my fellow college students who have a lot less to use and a lot more to gain from using a bank like BankSimple. Time is in short supply, and fees eat away at my little pool of cash. I'm willing to take the risk, and willing to put my money in the hands of people who are young, smart and innovative, instead of bureaucratic, slow and set in their ways. Not only that, but i…

your cash will be FDIC insured through their partners This is not something I'm willing to take their word for without seeing a copy of a legal opinion from someone independent. I don't want to find out after they go under that they've simply been depositing their reserves in an FDIC-insured account with another bank, and that as long as that partner bank stays afloat the FDIC won't pay out.

Is it clear that they are actually going to be a real bank? That bit about FDIC insured through their partners implies that they are more of a marketing driven company that off-loads the actual banking business to real banks providing white-labeled services.

Re: Twitter's Alex Payne quits, heads onto something new.

#82

Post by jarek »

dtran wrote: post #30
mrkurt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USAA lets you deposit scanned check images. The only requirement is that you have to have a credit card setup as overdraft protection. Decent photos seem like they'd work ok.

So do you think we'll move away from paper checks completely and just move around echecks from phone to phone? I've never really understood how checks are secure. They just have a routing number, an account number, and your signature right?

Cheques are earth-shatteringly non-secure. The entire system runs on trust. I've had a several-months-post-dated cheque I wrote cashed by a bank and accepted by mine without apparently as much as a look at the date field. (They also dinged me an overdraft fee. Reversed that when I complained, but not the cheque withdrawal itself.) A while back, there was a pretty loud story about an payday-advance business suing the maker of a subsequently cancelled cheque for the money and winning the amount.

The sooner North America weans itself off cheques and external for-profit inter-bank transfer systems (Paypal, grrr), the better off we'll be.

Re: Twitter's Alex Payne quits, heads onto something new.

#83

Post by johnpickens »

[deleted] wrote: post #77
billpaetzke wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ING Direct (ingdirect.com) is an amazing online-only bank that has virtually no fees. They've got amazing customer service. And they have the best bank web user interface I've ever dealt with. BankSimple will need to differentiate themselves from ING Direct somehow. edit: Why the downvotes? I use ING Direct as my main bank. I love it. BankSimple will need to differentiate themselves from ING Direct to win me over. ed…

[deleted]

They most certainly do have ATM access - more so than any other institution I've banked with. It's completely free at every CVS and Walgreens.

Re: Twitter's Alex Payne quits, heads onto something new.

#85

Post by byrneseyeview »

maxklein wrote: post #33

I'm sorry, but I want my bankers to be grave old men in suits. I also want my bank to have offices all over the world and I want to know that they are handling money many hundreds of times larger than whatever I have. I don't want a bank started by a guy called al3x, and who just left twitter. It sounds innovative, but it doesn't sound...dependable. And if there is one feature I want my bank to have, it's dependable.

Why do you care about any of that? The vast, vast majority of people don't lend their money to "the bank," they lend it to the government. If your deposits are FDIC-insured, you don't lose them, regardless of what your banker wears or where his offices are.

If these guys can beat the big banks on overhead and usability, they'll do extremely well.

Re: Twitter's Alex Payne quits, heads onto something new.

#86

Post by DrJokepu »

axod wrote: post #53
mattmaroon wrote: post #5

I've wanted to do something very much like this in a future startup. Banking does suck. Unfortunately, it's debatable how much of banks' suckiness is avoidable. Retail banking is caught in a vice-grip between fierce competition for low margins and government regulations. For example, from what I understand you pretty much have to run mainframes with certain antiquated, government-approved software to process stuff th…

>> "Banking does suck." FWIW, This may be true in the US, but certainly isn't a worldwide phenomenon. For example, UK banks pretty much work really well. Seeing US banking in comparison is like using a time machine to go back to the 1950s.

Well, we must be living in a different UK then. I would be actually willing to pay a monthly fee for a bank account at a bank that has a call centre with staff who actually speak English.

Re: Twitter's Alex Payne quits, heads onto something new.

#87

Post by ryanhuff »

gcheong wrote: post #56
varenc wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

startups like WePay seem to be overcoming this.

WePay gets around it by partnering with an actual bank. Not the same thing as being a bank.

Reading between the lines of the banksimple website, I wonder if they are going the same route.

Re: Twitter's Alex Payne quits, heads onto something new.

#88

Post by billpaetzke »

[deleted] wrote: post #77
billpaetzke wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ING Direct (ingdirect.com) is an amazing online-only bank that has virtually no fees. They've got amazing customer service. And they have the best bank web user interface I've ever dealt with. BankSimple will need to differentiate themselves from ING Direct somehow. edit: Why the downvotes? I use ING Direct as my main bank. I love it. BankSimple will need to differentiate themselves from ING Direct to win me over. ed…

[deleted]

ING is part of AllPoint's network. You can get instant withdrawals. There are 32,000 surcharge-free ATMs located in all 50 states, including major retailers like Target, Rite Aid, 7-11, and many others.

For deposits, I use direct deposit via my employer which works great. I get my money the same day everyone else does. For depositing checks, I use my credit union (2nd bank). Since I only get a few checks/year, this is not an issue for me.

I use ING direct for checking, savings, bill pay, and personal money transfers.

It is, in fact, a competitor.

Re: Twitter's Alex Payne quits, heads onto something new.

#89

Post by isamuel »

dtran wrote: post #30
mrkurt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USAA lets you deposit scanned check images. The only requirement is that you have to have a credit card setup as overdraft protection. Decent photos seem like they'd work ok.

So do you think we'll move away from paper checks completely and just move around echecks from phone to phone? I've never really understood how checks are secure. They just have a routing number, an account number, and your signature right?

Yes. The technical requirements for a piece of commercial paper---sometimes called a "negotiable instrument," or a check---are that it be a writing, payable to the order of someone specific or simply the bearer, that it be signed by the maker or drawer, that it be for a sum certain, that it be unconditional, that it be payable on demand, and that it be payable in currency.

Technically, you can make a valid check out of a napkin with a Sharpie.

Re: Twitter's Alex Payne quits, heads onto something new.

#90

Post by raphar »

davidw wrote: post #4

We've had the bank discussion here before, and some of it seems to come down to the fact that banks are required to do a lot of regulatory stuff that is not 'simple'.

I'm really curious about this banksimple and I hope they have really cool "grave old guys in suits" with them. They'll need it.

previous discusion at: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1049961

My previous comment in that discussion:

I work for a bank (not from USA though) and what I see as the toughest barrier in initiating a Bank is the massive amount of banking regulation that every institution must comply (not negotiable). Also the impact of new regulations on the systems running the business are usually non trivial. Missing any of these, means that you cant operate (or you can't do certain operations, generally critical).

As I said, the effort put in keeping with all this is very big. Usually the split is 50/50 with regulation vs new features (my view is as a software developer). The bank being global only makes things worse, as only adds more regulations from different places to equation.

Well that was the boring part. I think theres a place for new financial services but perhaps the way to get started is providing those new services and avoiding being a bank. As the institution adds more services and grows, it can begin to take into account the regulation little by little. That was my simplistic view ;)

Post reply on HN