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No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

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351–360 of 452 posts

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#351
post #312

US banks are weird [1]. Archaic. Slow. Filthy rich. Incompetent. And yet they're nearly impossible to disrupt due to the benefit of size. Starting a new bank is expensive, unless you want to pretend at being a real bank and letting another bank handling all of the nitty-gritty details. In which case you've now become a reseller of that bank, and will likely be even worse. The only thing that can disrupt US banks is c…

I don’t see what more US banks could do. I have been transferring money instantly to people online for over a decade for free. They have websites/apps, I can withdraw paper money around the world, what other utility could a “bank” provide me?

They are utilities that keep a database associating account number and dollar number.

I earn a few thousand dollars from them every year in the form of sign up bonuses, and I have never spent a dime in fees for having an account or transferring money.

If the US government offered a more protected way of saving money not subject to know-your-customer-revoke-access-to-your-property-at-anytime-under-the-guise-of-potential-criminal-activity laws, then I would use them.

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#352
post #312

US banks are weird [1]. Archaic. Slow. Filthy rich. Incompetent. And yet they're nearly impossible to disrupt due to the benefit of size. Starting a new bank is expensive, unless you want to pretend at being a real bank and letting another bank handling all of the nitty-gritty details. In which case you've now become a reseller of that bank, and will likely be even worse. The only thing that can disrupt US banks is c…

I don’t know if it counts as disruption exchanging one behemoth for another but my life got a lot better when I started using a Fidelity cash management account as my bank.

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#353
post #312

US banks are weird [1]. Archaic. Slow. Filthy rich. Incompetent. And yet they're nearly impossible to disrupt due to the benefit of size. Starting a new bank is expensive, unless you want to pretend at being a real bank and letting another bank handling all of the nitty-gritty details. In which case you've now become a reseller of that bank, and will likely be even worse. The only thing that can disrupt US banks is c…

Here in Norway new, innovative, and successful banks have been...wait for it...acquired by the big old banks. Then the enshittification starts.

Then customers scramble to find a replacement, which opens up the door to a new exciting bank, and history repeats.

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#354

I'd be thrilled if US banks figured out how to do "instant" money exchanges. Today, if I pay my credit card from an account with a different bank, the payment is reflected immediately in my Visa account, but takes 3-5 days to reflect in my main checking account. It's completely bonkers that a 100% electronic transaction takes days to fulfill.

FedNow is slowly rolling out. We'll see what happens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedNow

FedNow's list of participating financial institutions on their web site is a downloadable Excel spreadsheet. Innovation indeed.

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And fiat currency isn't purely about perception of value? Of course not. I don't know the laws of the country you live in, but in the US, the dollar is always acceptable as the payment of a court judgement and for the payment of taxes. That's not perception of value, that's value. All money is just IOUs, but getting an IOU from your landlord is different than getting an IOU from a stranger. You will have to pay you…

> The reach of crypto, outside of fraud and government graft (which is real value) is simply the reach of crypto marketing. Except when your government is not trustable and you have to find a way to store and transfer value in an independent and anonymous way.

The tricky part is there is a difference between "your government is not trustable" and "you don't trust your government" that you can never bridge.

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other thing stopping it is the law and the fact that the US dollar is the global reserve currency and that would be a pretty great way to ruin that

> that would be a pretty great way to ruin that Not really. It would be similar to tax rules—not really applicable to non-American depositors.

It _could_ be like that. But we’re very deep down slippery slope hypotheticals by this point.

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#357
post #305

What does "disruption" look like in the banking space? Banks want the perception of immovable, confidence, reliable, resilience, etc. It's what gives them the credibility to move big money. They don't want to "move fast and break things". Some may think about digital currencies. My warning is this: Be careful what you wish for. If we were to switch to a full digital currency, there are significant concerns that money…

Cash is already practically gone in a lot of countries. I don't know anyone who uses it and don't even know how the bills look nowadays. Must have been at least 10 years since I even touched physical cash.

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#358
post #312

US banks are weird [1]. Archaic. Slow. Filthy rich. Incompetent. And yet they're nearly impossible to disrupt due to the benefit of size. Starting a new bank is expensive, unless you want to pretend at being a real bank and letting another bank handling all of the nitty-gritty details. In which case you've now become a reseller of that bank, and will likely be even worse. The only thing that can disrupt US banks is c…

I don’t know if it counts as disruption exchanging one behemoth for another but my life got a lot better when I started using a Fidelity cash management account as my bank.

That doesn't have the same protections (at least FDIC) as a standard checking or savings account, correct?

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#359
post #350

Chime would disagree with this article title...

Well, it's half true and half false. There are a lot of "new" fintech-ish banks competing on fees, transaction speed, overdrafts, etc. - bank-type things that matter to consumers. But it's true, there are no fintech banks competing to be "too big to fail" and getting that government bailout money. You have to look at crypto for equivalents of the Federal reserve, and people don't recognize those as banks. Although I would say, Coinbase is getting pretty close to a consumer-level "crypto bank".

Re: No one is disrupting banks – at least not the big ones

#360
post #312

US banks are weird [1]. Archaic. Slow. Filthy rich. Incompetent. And yet they're nearly impossible to disrupt due to the benefit of size. Starting a new bank is expensive, unless you want to pretend at being a real bank and letting another bank handling all of the nitty-gritty details. In which case you've now become a reseller of that bank, and will likely be even worse. The only thing that can disrupt US banks is c…

Could banking customers moving their business to Credit Unions be disruptive? I know nothing about this space, by the way.
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