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Square Banking

squareup.com

61–70 of 174 posts

Re: Square Banking

#61

While Square makes (more) sense to get into the banking game, I've noticed a lot of companies only tangentially related to finance doing similar things, and I wonder what it's indicative of: - T-Mobile offers an exclusive checking account for their customers - Credit Karma promoting their own debit card - Robin hood doing "Cash Management" - Coinbase offering a debit card with crypto rewards Has something changed wit…

I don't know if anything has changed necessarily, but anecdotally I think the business model has been validated in a high profile way. Accruing returns on stored money (like RobinHood) has largely supplanted the wave of "fresh take on charging you transaction fees" model of Venmo and Cash App.

Re: Square Banking

#62

While Square makes (more) sense to get into the banking game, I've noticed a lot of companies only tangentially related to finance doing similar things, and I wonder what it's indicative of: - T-Mobile offers an exclusive checking account for their customers - Credit Karma promoting their own debit card - Robin hood doing "Cash Management" - Coinbase offering a debit card with crypto rewards Has something changed wit…

Everyone wants in on the game. There's this really big piece of the pie where fees and interest come into play. Every transaction has fees and some people carry balances that generate a lot of money in interest. It's how credit card providers can offer rewards.

At some point in our future we'll probably see the end of these rewards cards because the government will likely regulate it. Which I think is actually a good thing, because it's the people with the least amount of money that are footing the bill for those of us reaping the rewards.

Re: Square Banking

#63
post #27

0 overdraft fees. Yay. More like it. It will force major banks to rethink their overdraft fees as a revenue center. As someone who was not so well financially just a decade ago, overdraft fees seemed like penalty for being poor. When you are living paycheck to paycheck, you never know when your account will get overdrawn. And most evil thing was - bank will deny the charge because you didn’t have enough funds but wil…

https://www.fdic.gov/consumers/overdraft/

Overdrafts have been opt-in by regulation since 2010. What banks have done is try to trick people into opting into "overdraft protection," which is really just the old system that allows a customer's checking balance to drop below 0: https://www.wellsfargo.com/credit-cards/features/overdraft-p... As long as a customer takes no action or just says "no," they won't be allowed overdraw their checking balance.

Re: Square Banking

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is huge in an age where a lot of people are dinged through recurring subscriptions. You could rack up 5 or 6 charges and not even realize it, at which point you're out hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees.

I always struggled with this concept, why not stop at 0 when the account is overstretched? Here in Europe, for most people I would say, it's quite rare that the account goes to 0, and if it does, the transactions simply don't go through (unless it's a credit card). Isn't that asking for borrowing money at no fee? Don't get me wrong, I absolutely despise predatory bank charges, but wonder if that's a bit much to ask a…

Being able to go below 0 is not tied to having a credit card. Nearly all debit cards issued in Europe can do this to. The only ones that don’t are things like Electron (systematic authorization), but they don’t play well with “fast” systems like motorway tollgates

Re: Square Banking

#66

While Square makes (more) sense to get into the banking game, I've noticed a lot of companies only tangentially related to finance doing similar things, and I wonder what it's indicative of: - T-Mobile offers an exclusive checking account for their customers - Credit Karma promoting their own debit card - Robin hood doing "Cash Management" - Coinbase offering a debit card with crypto rewards Has something changed wit…

T-Mobile: helping the underbanked.

The others: profiting from interchange fees. If you can get your card to be “top of wallet” you can get a cut of every purchase a consumer makes. If you are a store, like Target, you can also drastically reduce the processing fees you pay to card issuers by redirecting those funds to yourself.

Re: Square Banking

#67
post #26

>Square Banking >Square, Inc. is a financial services company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Square’s banking affiliate, Square Financial Services, Inc. or Sutton Bank; Members FDIC. Um so they are insured by the FDIC? Am I doing business with Square, Square Financial Services, Inc., or Sutton Bank? Do I have any recurse when it comes to typical banking expectations / rules here when it comes to either…

Fidelity offers cash management accounts fdic insured up to $1M. They do this by “sharding” your account across multiple fdic banks.

Re: Square Banking

#68
post #27

0 overdraft fees. Yay. More like it. It will force major banks to rethink their overdraft fees as a revenue center. As someone who was not so well financially just a decade ago, overdraft fees seemed like penalty for being poor. When you are living paycheck to paycheck, you never know when your account will get overdrawn. And most evil thing was - bank will deny the charge because you didn’t have enough funds but wil…

> you never know when your account will get overdrawn

How? It’s not that hard to keep track of money in vs money out. I bet most of it is people that don’t understand it takes time for a cheque to clear or people that know an auto payment will overdraw their account but can’t do anything about it (ie: no money).

Overdraft fees should be illegal, especially for electronic transactions that get rejected.

Re: Square Banking

#70
post #26

>Square Banking >Square, Inc. is a financial services company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Square’s banking affiliate, Square Financial Services, Inc. or Sutton Bank; Members FDIC. Um so they are insured by the FDIC? Am I doing business with Square, Square Financial Services, Inc., or Sutton Bank? Do I have any recurse when it comes to typical banking expectations / rules here when it comes to either…

Square Financial Services is a Utah-chartered industrial loan company (ILC) with FDIC insurance [0]. Savings deposits go here.

Checking accounts are at Sutton Bank (partner bank). I assume the split is driven by Square Financial's three-year supervisory plan w/ FDIC and the mechanics of getting square off chase/wells card rails. Green dot did something similar by purchasing a chartered bank.

[0] https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/bankdecisions/depins/s...

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