Future of Banking
Banks and Innovation — Gringotts’ Goblins are Old Fashioned
I’ve led many high street banks through digital transformation and it always felt piecemeal, because legacy systems and corporate politics would not permit a uniform approach. What made the matters worse is that at any point of time your perfectly orchestrated fully digital onboarding could take a wild detour into the dark world of green character mode applications (hi from the 80s) due to some strong opinion supported by legal.
This February I had to open a business account at one of the Top-3 banks in the United States. I descended from the world of colorful mobile apps and unicorn milk into an equivalent of local Gringotts. KYC was easy because I’ve been their retail customer for decades, but I still had to spend close to 2 hours captive in the glass terrarium of a business banker. He eagerly typed and clicked away on his PC, printing out forms, correcting them with a pen, complaining how their online and in-the-branch print forms differ, and from time to time handing over to me their corporate iPad with the words “please enter the numbers I will read to you” and more artifacts of “let’s play pretend secure banking”.
But I was jubilant inside every minute during this account opening ordeal. They are still so backwards and so far behind that it’s easy to answer investors’ “what if a big bank” question.
Two years ago I left a cushy MD job at a big bank with a goal to create a banking solution with easy access to money and pain-free onboarding and now I’m super happy to share the results of our awesome team’s hard work.
We are bringing value to the younger crowd frustrated with traditional banking and craving a new solution to send and receive money instantly and to manage their day-to-day finances in their favorite messenger (Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, LINE and soon Discord).
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