
A Financial Service for People Fed Up With Banks - gramsey
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/technology/a-financial-service-for-people-fed-up-with-banks.html?ref=technology
======
GuiA
I tried opening an account with Simple, as I heard all the buzz around the
company and it seemed like they had a nice mobile app. A friend got me an
invite to their service (it's invite only right now).

So I fill out their online application, and they say they'll get back to me.
Cool. A few days later, I get an email saying that they'll need additional
verification because I've been a victim of identity theft in the past. What?
I've never had such problems, and I checked with my bank/etc. and they didn't
find any problems either.

So they want me to get notarized copies of a bunch of documents- I go do that,
which costs me $50+ in fees. I send the documents to them.

A week later, they contact me again- there's no way they can open an account
for me, for undisclosed reasons, but I can call their support to learn more.
OK, I call their support, and a (very nice) guy tells me that it has to do
with me not being a US citizen and my SSN being different in some way (? I've
been living here for almost 3 years now, working, being paid, opening bank
accounts, etc. without ever having a problem). He apologizes, and that's it.

Of course my $50+ in notary fees are lost.

They've been more problematic to me in 2 weeks without even having an account
than all of my banks that I've had accounts with for years combined.

So yeah, so much for "a financial service for people fed up with banks"

~~~
untog
I got an invite, went to the sign up page and then found out that I have to
have an iPhone to use it.

Cmd-W.

~~~
ben1040
The funny thing is the linked article shows an Android screenshot. But from
googling around, it looks like no such app has been released yet.

[http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2013/01/09/business/SIMPLE...](http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2013/01/09/business/SIMPLE2.html)

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pearkes
The Simple goals[1] feature has helped me save a ton of money FWIW. It
basically just hides money from you, and show's you this "safe to spend"
balance.

I actually look at this number, because the iPhone app loads quickly and only
requires a 4 letter passcode after logging in.

I set really agressive goals and when I notice I'm getting down to the wire on
"safe to spend" I make a conscious effort not to buy a coffee, or whatever
else.

If I saw my real bank balance, I'd shrug and say, "Oh, what's 3 bucks for
coffee?"

[1] <https://simple.com/blog/Simple/announcing-goals/>

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Tortoise
This is the same company that had a service failure where you couldn't
withdraw money from your account recently because their ATM cards wouldn't
work and they have no bank branches. I don't think you want to be an early
adopter.

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jonathanjaeger
When you're dealing with your money you're adding a whole other layer of
'switching costs'. Maybe I'm at a point in my life where I care more about net
income over getting into the nitty gritty of every transaction, but it's been
painless using Chase in NYC, going to ATMs or using a credit card, and taking
money in and out for online transactions. Is there a pain point I'm missing
here or is this better suited to someone with kids, a mortgage, etc.?

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dreamdu5t
What are people "fed up" with exactly?

Overdraft fees? All banks ask you to opt-in. Is that really the thing people
are "fed up" with? I find it hard to believe these people have much money, and
why Simple would want these idiots.

I have no issues depositing my money quickly, withdrawing my money, and
accessing a transaction log. My bank even provides a mobile app to do this. I
was asked to opt-in to overdraft, and all the charges were explained _very_
clearly. I bank with Chase.

~~~
m0th87
It might help to try to understand the target demographic rather than
handwaving them as idiots. I have a decent amount of money, and I'm most
certainly fed up with my institutional bank. An increasing share of my money
is making its way into my Simple account for a number of reasons:

1) Banks do have you opt-in for fees, but typically through opaque changes to
terms and conditions. When my bank was acquired, I started getting fees for,
e.g. using other ATMs. I'm sure they sent me something in regards to this, but
who the hell actually reads legalese? Contrast that with simple. When the new
year rolled in, they updated their terms and conditions with an email that
explained its effects in plain english (in a manner reminiscent of Creative
Commons licenses.)

2) Simple has ATMs _everywhere_ since it's part of Allpoint.

3) Their apps are just beautiful. Dealing with financial matters is probably
the thing I dread most in day-to-day endeavors. Simple completely changes that
equation; it makes the process actually pleasant.

4) From a political perspective, I just find most banks (including my
institutional one) deplorable. Their role in the financial crisis, and their
behavior afterward deserves repercussions. Simple has an unsullied history.

Say what you will, but I'm happy to give Simple my money given the experience
thus far. And clearly others are too.

~~~
philwelch
> Simple has ATMs everywhere since it's part of Allpoint

To be frank with you, Allpoint is pretty shit wherever I've lived. I don't
want to have to go to some dilapidated 7-11 to use their ATM. I want to use
any ATM I see on the street with no fee. It turns out I could get that with
either USAA or, apparently, Charles Schwab.

> Their apps are just beautiful. Dealing with financial matters is probably
> the thing I dread most in day-to-day endeavors. Simple completely changes
> that equation; it makes the process actually pleasant.

Can't really comment, except USAA and ING Direct (soon to become Capital One
360) both have perfectly usable web sites, and USAA's web site is even an
acceptable Mint, if that's what you want. (Personally, I use spreadsheets.)

> From a political perspective, I just find most banks (including my
> institutional one) deplorable. Their role in the financial crisis, and their
> behavior afterward deserves repercussions.

Isn't Simple backended by an institutional bank?

~~~
m0th87
RE: USAA, Charles Schwab, etc., this is a fair point. All of them have solid
reputations. Any idea which one provides the highest interest rates?

> Isn't Simple backended by an institutional bank?

This is a good point, the answer to which I'm unsure.

~~~
jacalata
From the article: __Simple is actually not a bank. It has deals with CBW Bank
and Bancorp, federally insured banks, to hold its customers’ money. __

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jbwyme
Although I'm happy to see someone attempt to do what Simple is attempting to
do, I don't think any sizable amount of people will be willing to drop their
bank and move to an alternative that doesn't allow cash deposits. I have two
bank accounts I regularly use: one is a regional bank based in Texas and the
other is Wells Fargo.

I hate my Wells Fargo account but I keep it open so I can deposit money and I
can receive account transfers easily from other people. Even with this setup I
sometimes find it difficult to get the money where I need it (specifically out
of my Wells Fargo account into my regional bank account) without hassle (and
fees).

Anyways, the MVP if you will for a bank that I would switch over to would be
one that allows me to deposit from anywhere (checks from home, cash from any
ATM anywhere that accepts deposits), withdraw from anywhere, and transfer to
any other account in a timely fashion.

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mattquiros
I've been exploring the idea of starting up a bank. The big banks here in my
country are so inefficient and I'm hoping to simply make a better banking
experience for consumers, hopefully via their mobile phones. Can somebody shed
some light on a few questions I have?

#1: I have absolutely no business background. Do I need to get an MBA in order
to understand how banks work from the back-office, and maybe the legalities?
Reading this article, the Simple co-founder apparently had an MBA. I'm a
programmer by trade (Java, Android/iOS, a little of web).

#2: Should I consider Simple a competitor or should I think of banking as a
very local kind of industry, like e-commerce? I don't want to build just
another Simple clone, and considering Simple's success, if they scale up here
in southeast Asia, I don't want to be just a copycat.

~~~
Q6T46nT668w6i3m
You should. The market could benefit from new participants.

1\. You don’t need an MBA to understand banking. While the importance of
regulation and compliance (“legalities”) is paramount, it isn’t something you
learn from an MBA program.

2\. It depends. Simple isn’t a bank. If you were successfully issued a
charter, you could likely surpass Simple, et al. from an innovation and
feature perspective. FYI:
<http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/banking_12779.htm>

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jmillikin
How is this better than a credit union?

~~~
lbotos
I think a lot of people are missing the core of Simple. It's the "Safe to
Spend" Idea. I've used simple for the past 8 months and it's helped me get
into an even better mindset about saving/allotting money. I used to bank with
PNC and use their budgeting tools but the safe to spend idea is just that;
money you are free to use.

EDIT: For added perspective I'm an early twenties recent college grad.

Just the other day I realized that I had a credit card payment due and it was
slightly higher than I expected (Holiday Spending) and I went into a minor
panic as I was a little frazzled in paying it. I logged into simple and that's
when I realized that I created a goal that was my credit card limit. This
meant over the past month I had already slowly been paying down the bill
without even realizing it. Everyday a small portion of my safe to spend was
put into that goal. I made the payment without even "rebudgeting". That was a
great feeling. I'm living well within my means but I feel like I have more
money than ever. Simple makes it easy to keep yourself in check. I have a few
items I plan on purchasing in the near future and I just created a few goals
so that when the time comes I'll already have paid for it.

Lastly, the at a glance view of your finances without much ado is GREAT. I
have an automatically generated daily average income/spending for the
day/week/month/year averaged over various periods. I have graphs that show me
how my funds have fluctuated and I'm starting to see some patterns in my
spending habits. I've haven't banked like this before and I'm excited to see
where else they can help.

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pcurve
The company missed a valuable window of opportunity to gain a lot of traction
when there was strong anti-bank sentiment. People anxiously waited for invites
that took too long to come, and when they finally did, there were problems.

Meanwhile the economy has improved, and let's face it, when there's sufficient
fund sloshing around in our checking account to make those pesky fees non-
issues, the big banks are not that bad.

In addition, many banks have cleaned up their act under pressure from
regulators and customers, so now you have much smaller pool of people who are
still willing to switch their banks out of spite.

In the end, this was a business that could've taken off and sustained for
awhile had their timing and execution been better. After all, once people
switch banks, they stick with them.

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SeoxyS
I've been a Simple customer and have nothing but good things to report. As a
bank, they provide pretty much all basic services, except for perhaps cash
deposit (something I haven't needed to use in years). You can use any ATM out
there. You'll probably get charged a fee by the ATM itself, but that's
something I can live with. Most of the time, I try to get enough cashback when
I get my groceries to cover my very minimal cash needs.

Where Simple really shines though is in two areas:

1) General non-sucky-ness. It's not a single feature, but rather the quality
of the overall experience. The support features makes it really easy to write
a textual query right in the regular dashboard or mobile app, and they usually
reply within hours. There's no calling robotic phone lines and spending 30min
in menus or on hold… The website itself is beautiful and extremely usable.
Unlike, say, Bank of America Online, the emotion you feel while navigating
simple.com is delight, not frustration and exasperation.

2) Goals and Safe to Spend. When you open either the app or the website, there
is a very visible balance amount. The trick is, it is not your actual account
balance, but rather what Simple calls your Safe-to-Spend balance. Simple has a
goals section, in which you can set up goals you wish to achieve by a certain
date, as well as reserved funds (eg. an emergency fund). Simple takes all of
that information into account, as well as recurring bills such as rent
payments and subtracts it from the money it considers safe to spend.

It's great, it has really had a positive impact on my finances. I've never
been good at budgeting, but through the way Simple handles Safe-to-Spend, it
has kind of forced me into better consumption patterns.

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biswajitsharma
I am not in US, so I cannot open an account here. But Prima Facie, this seems
like another Bank to me. Ofcourse, they are trying to simplifying a few
things. But they do not have the kind of scale larger banks do, say Citibank
etc. So I'm guessing once they reach a level where they have a lot of
customers, their system will be forced to become more convoluted due to
operational overhead.

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IndianGuy79
I am typically very lenient guy, but in this case I would say this is complete
fail. What Simple is trying to do is extrapolate the problems people have with
bank - e.g. overdraft fees, evil sequencing of transactions etc and market
service based on it - whereas they have their own list of shortcomings and (as
of now) lack of ability to be a real alternative to be a Bank.

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the_bear
I tried signing up for Simple, and the entire experience was pretty terrible.
I realize that they're a new company trying to tackle a big problem so I
wanted to cut them some slack, but the ways in which they messed up are hard
to forgive.

Last July, I got my invitation to use Simple.com, which I'd been really
excited about for over a year. I start signing up, and instantly I'm surprised
by how their signup form is both the most visually attractive form I'd ever
used on a website, and how it barely worked. I ran into three different bugs
just with the initial signup form.

One of the bugs was that it asks what type of smartphone I have. When I
selected Android, it said to submit the form, but that they don't have an
Android app yet. No problem, I don't care about a mobile app. The problem is
that when you selected Android, the form broke and there was no way to submit
it. I'd already spent several minutes filling out the form (including giving
them info on my other bank account to transfer money into Simple) and I didn't
want to lose all my info, so I just said that I had an iPhone so I could
continue signing up.

Then I get to the next screen where it says that the only way to continue the
signup process is to install the iPhone app. Of course I couldn't do this, so
I emailed their support explaining that I'd mistakenly said I have an iPhone
because of a bug with their signup form. I get a response back saying that if
I don't have an iPhone, there's no way to use Simple, so I'd have to be added
to the Android waiting list.

One problem: they'd already taken the money out of my other bank account. I
assumed that they hadn't done this because I'd never actually signed up or
agreed to their terms or anything like that (you agree to the terms via their
app). I actually only know that they transferred money out of my account
because a different support person emailed me in November asking why in the
world I wasn't using my Simple account. I responded saying that I'd already
talked to them about this, and I didn't have an iPhone. That person told me
that I didn't need an iPhone and that I could use the service by logging in
online. I forwarded her the email from a different Simple support person
contradicting what she said, and she just dismissed it (basically saying,
"yeah, that's not true") without apologizing or offering an explanation.

So I tried resetting my password online so I could log in, only to run into
yet another bug with their software. The password reset feature was completely
broken. So I emailed the support person saying that their password reset
feature didn't work. She ignored the issue (no apology, no explanation,
nothing) and just told me that I don't need an iPhone without explaining how
to actually get into the software, or why I was given incorrect information
earlier.

That's where we are now. I've been run in circles by their customer service,
I've encountered a half dozen different bugs, and that's without even being
able to log in! My next step is to call their 800 number, but I'm already
completely fed up with the experience and I won't be a customer of theirs
regardless of the resolution at this point. I've been frustrated by every bank
I've ever dealt with, but none of them have been as bad as Simple so far.

I seriously hope they get these kinks worked out so that other potential
customers don't have the experience I've had.

~~~
jauer
I've had a similar experience with their support. They asked me why I wasn't
using the account and I mentioned no ATMs near me and no Android app and they
directed me to the web site and didn't address the ATM issue.

IMO their online banking is pretty cool but the so far their customer service
has been worse than every other bank and credit union I've used.

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damian2000
It figures that the guy who started this is Australian. Australia has some of
the worst banks in the world in terms of customer service. Last week I was in
a bank (Commonwealth Bank of Australia) with my wife attempting to negotiate a
better deal in terms of her account fees, which I believe are exorbitant at
approx $10 per month for a basic savings account w/online banking. She'd been
with them for 25+ years and had a reasonably significant account balance. They
didn't budge on anything, even after she asked them to close her account. I
was totally appalled at their attitude.

~~~
onetwothreefour
How do I down vote you? You're writing off an entire country's banking system
with one personal example?

I have my own example of banks in Australia, and they're some of the best I've
ever dealt with.

Banks in the US on the other hand...

There's no reason to have an account with a bank in the US when you can have
one with a credit union. Unless you're really rich and don't care about fees.

~~~
damian2000
I'm not writing off all Aussie banks, but I think I have the right to an
opinion on the matter ... I've had bad experiences in terms of customer
service with a number of them over a period of 30 years. Bankwest, Bendigo,
CBA and Westpac to be exact. Many friends and family have had similar
experiences to me.

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hayksaakian
I feel like banking is a bad problem for the modern startup that relies on
speed of implementation over security concerns.

I'll be happy to see them win, but I'd rather not be a Guinea pig.

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alxndr
So it's an analytics front-end for an account with Bancorp?
(<http://www.thebancorp.com/about/>)

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npguy
Three years from now, some bank will probably buy them out for their data
analysis capabilities.

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dinispass
oddly enough they declined my application due to "negative" or "closed" bank
accounts. I have been a member of federal credit unions, big banks, have a job
and credit cards yet they also denied me. super weird!

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webjames
Anyone aware of a UK alternative?

Mint is US only and the closest thing in the UK we have to that is lovemoney,
which falls short in many areas. I'd love to hear from anyone who has
experience with alternatives.

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monsterix
The question is why call it an online business when every sign-up request has
to go through a manual evaluative process?

I requested an account almost 10 months back. No response yet. I forgot about
your service completely.

