Banksimple: a New Era of Banking?

This week, Banksimple, a US financial services platform, issued its first cards to its own employees as a first stage of their launch.  This is an exciting development as Banksimple has the potential to encourage a wave of innovation in banking.

Technically, Banksimple is not a bank, but rather a front-end money management platform, that works with FDIC chartered banks to store their customers' money in the back-end.  As a front-end platform, Banksimple is all about providing great customer service (think Zappos) through whatever channel is most convenient to their customers, from phone, mobile, chat, Skype, FaceTime or email, and eliminating all fees. 

In terms of product features, Banksimple is initially focused on making sure their customers get the best deal possible, without having to think about it.  In the background, customers will have checking accounts, savings accounts, loans, etc.  However, Banksimple is all about using predictive programming to optimise the management of these various accounts, so that the Banksimple customer always has sufficient funds for spending, while getting the best possible interest rates.

Beyond this, Banksimple eventually plans to open their platform to application developers.  This clearly necessitates a real focus on security and privacy, but could propel an exciting wave of innovation in money management and financial services.

At a time when banks are increasing their fees, and very possibly soon hike their interest charges, there might be an important place for Banksimple, as a commercial weapon for the consumer, in the financial services ecosystem.  However, having just begun the first stage of their launch, Banksimple has a lot of work a head of it yet.