Personally, Finance is where I feel most underserved, both in high school education, snake oil sales protection (portfolio managers, stock tips, online courses), technology, and compatibility. My Robinhood account syncs with OpenFolio but not Mint or Personal Capital. My WiseBanyan account syncs with OpenFolio and Personal Capital but not Mint. My HSA syncs with Mint but not Personal Capital. I end up having NO meta-bank-manager that can show me everything. It is a mess, and its 2016 and I cant yet open my Wallet and press pay my bills for the month. Mint Bills isnt bad, but it adds a delay. If I want to buy a stock in OpenFolio it forwards me to Robinhood. If i want to send money in splitwise it sends me to venmo. If i make a payment with facebook messenger, i have to go manually record the transaction in splitwise as a cash payment, and then metatag the transaction in mint. All these things and contexts that should be automatically transferred between programs are not because everything is unixlike tiny, proprietary, and with a custom everychanging api. Manilla was a good idea that is too bad we lost, a PDF locker of every bill automatically ingested as they were generated by the provider, it would be a no brainer great addition to Wallet.
Here is my vision for a banking silo at apple (or really any incumbant bank for that matter, if they chose to become a tech platform.)
Apple Financial
Personal Banking
- social tab/debt tracking and payment transfers - Splitwise/Venmo/FBPay
- online checking account w/ applepay - Monzo/Starling/Simple
- line of credit - PayPal Credit/LocalCU
- checking account / loan management + history - Mint/Manilla/Personal Capital
- bill pay, routing from any checking account to any biler - mint bills (check), manilla, prism, doxo, moneystream
- identity abstraction - privacy/final
- investment accounts - Robinhood
- social investment research and management, knowledge transfer - OpenFolio/SparkFin/Motif
- investment gaming - forcerank.com
- automatic retirement - WiseBanyan/Bettermint/WealthFront/SigFig/FutureAdvisor
- loans - apples piles of gold coin
- taxes - turbotax
But serving home users shouldnt be enough for Apple. Apple should want to be a banking platform, for people to build on top of. Another massive API for the appstore. And what do people build on top of banks? Small Businesses.
Small Business Banking
- accounting - Quickbooks/Wave/Xero
- loans - LendingClub Small Business
- checking
- employee hsa/retirement
- hr/hiring - Lever?, im not going to list every HR startup
- payment processing - square/stripe
- crm, web building, marketing - hubspot, wave, weebly, webflow, mailchimp
Apple needs to continue to invest in services that make its customers money, so its customers continue to develop content for Apple. Developers developers developers. The Microsoft/Salesforce/Adobe/Oracle marketing clouds do not offer companies the banking side of running a company. They get as far as ERP/Accounting, and then push you to a brick and mortar incumbent. Regulatory Compliance probably makes this side of my pipedream unplausable.
Apple is focusing on Home Automation, and a Music/TV Platform. Health Care is a very interesting vertical. Had I been in charge it would have been a tough sell to get me to approve, but now I think its fairly brilliant to be the mesh between all the little health trackers in life. But what is one of the most important parts of my long term health? Retirement. Apple, why cant I hand you cash, and you be my Vanguard? Investments should be more important than superficial health graphs tracking my steps. Look at how simple motif makes one click retirement saving. https://www.motifinvesting.com/motifs/horizon-model-15-year-... https://www.motifinvesting.com/motifs/retiring-2035
The important thing about designing a fintech giant from scratch (slash from tiny acquired pieces) is recognizing that you need to both offer first class services, and be compatible with competitors offering the same or better service. Use an Apple Financial checking account, or use a Schwab one. As long as the end user is managing everything in Wallet/Mint/OpenFolio, its ok if they store their actual money in 50 other places. Focus on keeping eyeballs, and loyalty will follow. Microsoft has Enterprise Productivity on lock, Adobe on Creation, Facebook on Communication and Photography. Apple should go after a DIFFERENT market (finance. not streaming, plenty of those exist.) but with the same exhaustive squidlike reaching playbook. Everyone NEEDS banking.