
A new kind of checking account. No overdraft fees. No worries. - kogir
https://www.gobank.com/
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notahacker
_Thanks for your interest in GoBank. We’re sorry, but we’re unable to complete
your membership request right now._

Thank you for IP blocking me from visiting your home page, because as everyone
knows US residents never travel. I also think it's a _little_ bit presumptuous
and certainly not very RESTful to assume that navigating to gobank.com is
equivalent to a "membership request", especially for a supposed bank.

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sama
Good point; we can change it to make it clear you have to be a US resident to
open an account but allow registration from other IPs.

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khenney
IP detection is crap, too. I'm in California and while my IP sometimes gets
detected as being from a few towns over, it's certainly still in the United
States - but I'm blocked.

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greghinch
No overdraft fees I guess is a good offer if you run into that a lot.
Personally I much prefer Schwab's offer: no ATM fees, worldwide. I don't often
(I think ever actually) find myself over-drafting my account. I do often find
myself needing to withdraw cash, and in a wide variety of locations. It's nice
to not have to worry about the $2-4 most charge, and even better when
traveling internationally.

Go looks to have pretty good ATM coverage, but you can't beat no fee at
_EVERY_ ATM.

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kungfooey
USAA has the same policy, too. They refund your ATM fees paid to /other/
banks, up to $15 a month.

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greghinch
Yea a friend was telling me about that. Schwab doesn't impose a limit (that I
know of, I've max gone into the $30 range in fees in a month). Schwab also
covers international fees, which I believe USAA does not.

I do think USAA is a great org as well, and if you need loans they seem to
have some of the best rates, but for my needs Schwab works better

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lazerwalker
It's not clear to me if there are any advantages to using GoBank over Simple
(other than trivialities like being able to get a custom image on your debit
card).

As an aside, it seems ridiculous to me that neither GoBank nor Simple refunds
ATM fees charged by out-of-network ATM providers. For services that allege to
be all about removing frustration for customers, it's stupid to make me open
up your app to find which seemingly-arbitrarily ATMs near me happen to be part
of your network. Other online banks like Ally and Schwab already offer this;
why can't you?

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jumpbug
Does Simple allow for sending checks from an online interface yet? If they
don't, that's one point for GoBank.

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rufo
Yes, that's basically what "Send Money" does in Simple.

It does look like GoBank is doing instant person-to-person transfers, which
Simple doesn't have just yet (but they've said is coming soon).

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eridius
Instant person-to-person transfers is basically only going to work if the
recipient is also a GoBank member, no? Unless they're partnering with a
service like Dwolla to send the money?

Speaking of, it would actually be pretty cool if I could send money with
Dwolla directly from Simple :) Dwolla's iPhone app is terrible, and their web
interface isn't much better.

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nathan_long
The one feature I want most from a bank would probably require overhauling the
entire system. It would be as follows:

I make a purchase, and within seconds I'm prompted on my smartphone to put it
in one of my custom budget categories.

This would utterly solve the pain of sorting it out later, and have the added
benefit of fraud protection. "Why, no, I DIDN'T buy gas in Ohio 10 seconds
ago."

Super bonus points if the categorization data goes to an endpoint of my
choosing, so I can ensure it's not used for data mining.

~~~
eridius
Simple's iPhone app can get updates pretty darn quickly after a purchase
(typically within just a minute or two). Adding push notifications for
purchases would actually be a great addition and wouldn't require overhauling
the entire system.

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kogir
This is what my friends at Loopt helped build after getting acquired by Green
Dot.

If you have enough money to use Fidelity or Schwab there are better options,
but their mobile tooling is really good, it's hard to get surprised, and the
custom card image is pretty cool.

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saryant
Schwab has no minimum balance requirement.

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jroblak
True - but you can't sign up for a checking Aaccount only. They require you
have a brokerage account through Schwab as well.

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stevenbedrick
Yes, but they don't require you to do anything with it- IIRC you don't have to
fund it, and you certainly don't have to use it or maintain any kind of
balance in it.

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maxerickson
I'm in the process of bank shopping, so I looked into it just now. If you set
up automatic deposits into a checking account, they waive the $1000 minimum
for the brokerage account.

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stevenbedrick
Oh, that must be new- when I signed up a couple of years ago there weren't any
requirements like that. Thanks for looking into it.

For whatever it's worth, it is a really, really, really great checking
account. And their online and mobile tools have gotten pretty good in recent
years. Not anywhere near the level of, say, BankSimple, but certainly more
than usable.

~~~
maxerickson
Actually, it looks like the automatic deposits/$1000 minimum are for a
investment account without the checking account.

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numbsafari
BETA? I'm supposed to deposit my money in a BETA?

I'd recommend dropping the BETA label. When it comes to money, I don't think
BETA works.

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exabrial
I'd like a bank account that allowed more than a 4 digit pin, and locked out
the credit card side of my "debit card"

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Vivtek
I'm pretty sure a 4-digit PIN is baked into the standard, but you're right
about policy settings like that. I'd like that, too.

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thedufer
Pretty sure that's not true. At my credit union, I set a 6-digit PIN, and I
never had trouble at ATMs or anything like that.

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Swizec
This is great! I love that it's meant to run on a smartphone.

However, I don't find it great that I can't use this service because I'm not
an american. Oh well, same as all the other cool new financial disruptions :(

But I really came here to ask a question: Do any banks outside the US charge
overdraft fees? I have never heard of this here in Slovenia, nor from any of
my friends in the rest of Europe, and I think there'd be a revolt of some sort
if they tried to institute those[1]. Sure, there's interest on negative
balance, but no overdraft fees.

[1] For instance, a class action suit has recently assured that banks cannot
charge ATM fees when using another bank's ATM within Slovenia. Something about
cartels and so on. They even had to refund everyone's money for the previous
few years.

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astral303
How does this compare to Simple?

I have a checking account with DCU, a local credit union. I have overdraft
fees and my ATM fees at any ATM get refunded. I have a local branch I can go
to for a cashier's check. The bank's web site has Intuit's Financeworks, which
is a Mint-like service that aggregates all my DCU and other accounts in one
view. It's not as polished as Mint, but works fine.

For this reason, it's really difficult for me to see value in switching to
GoBank or Simple. I think it would be good for these sites to differentiate
themselves from smaller banks or credit unions that have sane/customer-
friendly fee structures.

~~~
filiwickers
I have had the same problems. I am a Simple member but I just can't justify
putting my money there over my local credit union.

Local credit union gives me a great APR, no ATM/overdraft fees, free bill pay,
and dividends (on a checking account!). Sure its nice to know how much I have
to spend, but Mint hooks up fine to the credit union and does the job.

Meanwhile, it looks like Gobank did a great job copying simple.

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gyardley
Feels like I'm trudging through peanut butter when I scroll up and down the
page. I suspect there's just too much going on and it's killing performance.

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james33
Good to see more competition in this space, but I'm sticking with Simple for
now.

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fossuser
Is there any advantage of gobank over simple? It seems like they're the same
thing.

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sama
We think we add a lot of new features, and have a very fair fee schedule.
Check it out and let us know what you think!

~~~
eridius
I asked the exact same question in another comment[1], about what GoBank
provides that Simple doesn't. Your site doesn't really answer that question.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5062710>

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DEinspanjer
Seems interesting, but I'm too comfortable with my current BoA account to feel
it is worth the hassle of changing stuff over.

One thing I have been looking for lately has been some sort of account
suitable for use as a petty cash account for my PTA. Bluebird is close, but
they don't allow accounts held by an organization as opposed to an individual.

Here is my bullet list of features I want:

Available to a non-profit at low cost

Debit only

Easy to put money in via e-check, etc.

Sub-accounts with individual cards

Strong sub-account authorization controls

    
    
      Amount per day
    
      Quick and easy  on / off switch
    
      Instant notification of use
    
      pre-authorization of amount or vendor maybe?

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eridius
How does this compare with Simple? The only thing I see that you offer that
Simple doesn't is custom card images. You also offer the ability to send money
to friends, but there's no explanation of how that works or how your friend
claims the money (Simple lets you send money by mailing checks). Simple also
advertises their money management tools, but I don't see any of that on
gobank.com.

So what does GoBank do to make a compelling argument for using them over
Simple?

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ChuckMcM
Nicely done, the interactive web site style is more effective on a desktop
than a tablet in my opinion. And random free QA note it doesn't work well
Chrome on iPad, better with Safari on iPad.

A paypal like tool to let you send/receive money from non-gobank customers
would be cool. I'd love a service that does what PayPal does, _and_ happens to
be a bank, a bit more accountable that way.

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tedchs
FYI, this appears to be not a new bank, but an extension of Green Dot, the
prepaid debit card company. From the fine print on gobank.com:

GoBank is a brand of Green Dot Bank, Member FDIC, which also operates under
the brands Green Dot Bank and Bonneville Bank. Deposits under any of these
trade names are deposits with a single FDIC-insured bank, Green Dot Bank, and
are aggregated for deposit insurance coverage.

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benatkin
This is the company that runs the PayPal MoneyPak things, which are a way to
instantly put money into PayPal, by using cash instead of a digital check
(which takes about three days). <https://www.moneypak.com/>

Seems like they know how to provide useful services, but I doubt they have the
kind of customer service I get from my Credit Union.

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phildeschaine
>No overdraft fees.

I already have this and have had it for 5 years, through my credit union.

In fact, just yesterday I overdrafted (first time in years) and was delighted
to see it automatically transferred the amount to my credit card. So, it's
basically the same as if I had made a purchase of that amount on my credit
card.

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DanI-S
I'm part of the GoBank team and have been using the app daily for a few months
now. My favourite part is that by making peer-to-peer money transfer so easy,
we have basically solved that awful group-dining-check-splitting problem. It's
honestly worth signing up just for that.

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massarog
Is this any different than bluebird by Amex/Walmart?

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sama
We have a lot of other features, and we're also a real bank.

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RaphiePS
If I recall correctly, Simple doesn't have any ATM access. That feature alone
is massive -- convenient cash access is very important to me.

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eridius
I just checked. Simple partners with Allpoint so you have access to their
entire network of ATMs (which is pretty large). They also don't charge any
fees for out-of-network ATMs (although the out-of-network ATM may charge you a
fee).

~~~
RaphiePS
Ahh, thanks. I should have done my research!

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geetarista
"Thanks for your interest in GoBank. We’re sorry, but we’re unable to complete
your membership request right now."

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res0nat0r
All of the items on the front page I currently get with Chase (except for the
personal pic on my card thing).

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magicseth
The wood parallax effect seems gratuitous, and strange, and not performant on
my browser.

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ajaimk
What does this offer that Simple doesn't already?

