Mastodawn

BaaS = bankruptcy as a service

@michael unfortunately yes. i mean the reality is that theoretically there could be some improvements to people's lives introduced by younger people getting involved in banking services... but the reality is that as soon as you open that regulatory window a centimeter millions of russian and chinese crypto scammers flood the zone, facilitated by a small number of incredibly bad actors in the banking sector (of which Evolve Bank is the undisputed champion).

@michael it's almost comical at this point that Evolve has been a part of almost every single major fintech scandal.

A barrier to entry is sometimes good. Everybody and their mother can set up a professional-looking web-site, and if it's just as easy to set up something that looks like a bank it's a recipe for disaster.

Like somebody setting up a bitcoin exchange on an ephemeral cloud server or while asking basically programming questions.

There should be a bit of gatekeeping so fraudsters and idiots cannot enter, but not so much that it's impossible to start an online-only (real, with KYC, AML, and FDIC insurance or equivalent) bank.

@michael there's been online only banks for like 20 years, since at least ING

Which ING do you mean? Because I'm thinking of the Dutch very much not-online-only bank founded well over 250 years ago…

But yeah, there are some, but older brick-and-mortar banks do put up roadblocks. For example, the three big Dutch banks run a single national ATM network, and the government is considering requiring all banks, including online-only ones, have a network of ATMs covering the entire country, which would force all the online-only banks to pay to the traditional ones, at a rate decided by the three big ones, and for a service very few online customers need.

Banken bezorgd over wetsvoorstel dat contant geld beschikbaar moet houden

Kleinere banken maken zich zorgen over een wetsvoorstel waardoor ze afhankelijk worden van Geldmaat. Als zij verplicht worden om een dekkend netwerk van pinautmaten aan te bieden aan hun klanten, krijgt Geldmaat te veel macht, vinden de banken.

@michael i was thinking of that ING, which i think went to "no bricks and mortar branches" in the early 2000s? but maybe that was just their entry to the american market, or i'm confusing it with another bank.

It's very possible they did that in the US, but they have several physical branches in the Netherlands, are a systemically important bank in Europe, and in the top 50 largest banks in the world, so I'd hardly say they qualify as an online-only banking startup.

At least in my mind that's more a lean bank for (young) customers that don't require complex banking services and just need an account with a payment card and online self-service.