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Comment by Q6T46nT668w6i3m | Hacker News Reader

We're a substitute for your bank, i.e. you'd use a BankSimple debit card, use our website or mobile app for payments and deposits, speak with our customer service representatives and so on.

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My question is what does that buy me? Switching from an established bank to a mint.com like interface + an unknown bank that holds my deposits. There's no killer app to sign up for your service. Killer apps that I could think off are, (Holding deposits in multiple currencies, Savings account like interest on my checking. Right now the funds I park in checking for immediate expenses don't accrue interests till I move it to savings, Free payment gateway integration, so I could transact with anyone having a credit card like paypal, Free money transfers to any third-party bank in any currency in any country(you could kill western union with this)). Saying that I could grep through my statement more efficiently and visualize the data doesn't cut it as a market disruption.

I think the killer app is that this is a bank that actually cares about their customer's experience (because they know it's one of their big competitive advantages), and is coming at it from the standpoint of techies who understand what should be possible. In itself, that's not a checkbox on a feature list that you can line up against the other banks, but it should show itself in myriad ways as they rederive what a bank is from first principles. They're obviously not done. If they keep pushing, that's exciting.

Also, since they're likely to be run much more cost efficiently than most banks, they should be able to do a lot of things without the normal gotcha fees.

I get all that from First Republic now. Great web tools, no-fee access to any ATM, and fantastic phone support.

I'm not just looking for a bank that does the standard stuff somewhat better, or is nicer to me. There is a lot more that could be done. Wealth management related startups like Mint have scratched that surface, but with an end to end implementation of a bank and all the tools and data that brings, a lot more becomes possible.

Also, First Republic's site looks like something made with a table layout in the 90s and left alone since, so I doubt that they're doing anything innovative on the consumer facing side that requires any amount of tech expertise.

Admittedly my finances are pretty simple, but my bank is something I really don't want to think about much or spend a lot of time dealing with. Maybe if someday I have a lot of wealth to manage I'll feel differently. The most important thing is that I can always get somebody on the phone right away that is informed and helpful.

First Republic's web tools aren't going to win any design awards but they do the job and have never given me any trouble.

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