111–120 of 258 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explain why you think Robinhood is unrelated to finance and is jumping into it just because it's easy to?
Not the best example, perhaps, but a stock brokerage app getting into banking (especially with shady marketing [0]) feels like feature creep. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18699995
Another answer: because regular banks are awful to deal with. They don't have nice APIs to just move money around. They apply velocity limits at surprising times. They can terminate your account suddenly for opaque reasons. They charge high regular fees and even higher "gotcha" fees if you make a mistake. They can take back money sent to you for up to 90 days, but often can't get back money you sent to crooks even if…
Honestly, I wouldn't trust Google (or any other tech giant) to be my bank. My bank doesn't have a history of locking people's accounts when they post "the wrong" political opinions online. My bank doesn't have a plan to monetize access to my account, or to limit use of the account to only those activities of which the bank's army of woke employees approve. I think I'll stick with a real bank, thanks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the best example, perhaps, but a stock brokerage app getting into banking (especially with shady marketing [0]) feels like feature creep. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18699995
Really? I'm struggling to think of any major stock brokerage that doesn't offer banking services.
Is it common for boutique brokerages to offer banking?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another reason is the horrible interest rates. Wealthfront and Robinhood are offering "bank" accounts that have 1.8% APY that is FDIC insured. If your business has a high turnover month-to-month, that money used to pay your bills can accumulate interest.
I thought wealthfront and the like aren't exactly the same type of insurance. They don't put your money in a single account, and if you ever needed the insurance you have to go through a third party that made a deal with the actual banks.
Another thing is that these neobanks have withdrawal amount limits and ATM limits, and so they aren't a great choice for storing emergency funds.
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Just bought a brand new car this week from a dealership (US) and the seller refused to accept a check.
They’ll generally accept a cashier’s check. Ours would also accept a personal one as long as you didn’t mind them delaying mailing the title for a few weeks.
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I bank with a shitty national bank (long story, need access to Zelle/P2P transfers). My emergency fund is 6 months expenses, low 5 figures. 150-200 basis points of interest annually is trivial when 1 or 2 wire fees ($20) to get access to those funds same day blows away all of interest gains over 6-12 months. If interest rate mattered to folks, more would move to providers offering higher rates (you see this sprouting…
If you have a checking account with the same bank you keep your emergency fund in then you can access the funds at any time with an online transfer and a check. (Discover & Ally offer checking accounts) It doesn't have to be your main checking account.
Do I somehow slip under all the banking laws? Just as an "experiment?" Is this something that I could do? OR is it just a crazy idea?
Another answer: because regular banks are awful to deal with. They don't have nice APIs to just move money around. They apply velocity limits at surprising times. They can terminate your account suddenly for opaque reasons. They charge high regular fees and even higher "gotcha" fees if you make a mistake. They can take back money sent to you for up to 90 days, but often can't get back money you sent to crooks even if…
I wanted to build a product based on moving money around, and it seemed like it would be easier to start my own than to get what I wanted at a reasonable price. The financial industry is needlessly complicated and I don't know why it's so hard to just move money around. I can write checks easily and even manually set up recurring ACH transfers, so why can't I automate that with an API? There are a couple companies th…
I guess regulation and the technology being fairly hard to iterate on since a lot of systems are running the same software as they were 20-30 years ago when everything was moved over.
Another answer: because regular banks are awful to deal with. They don't have nice APIs to just move money around. They apply velocity limits at surprising times. They can terminate your account suddenly for opaque reasons. They charge high regular fees and even higher "gotcha" fees if you make a mistake. They can take back money sent to you for up to 90 days, but often can't get back money you sent to crooks even if…
Honestly, I wouldn't trust Google (or any other tech giant) to be my bank. My bank doesn't have a history of locking people's accounts when they post "the wrong" political opinions online. My bank doesn't have a plan to monetize access to my account, or to limit use of the account to only those activities of which the bank's army of woke employees approve. I think I'll stick with a real bank, thanks.
It's easy (and fun) to complain about the bad (or just weird) product experiences that banks regularly churn out. Believe it or not, most banks are trying their best. But as other commenters have noted, banks aren't staffed by technologists, so their choices for how to solve these problems begin and end with buying one of the available off-the-shelf software products. Spoiler alert, these products generally are both…