They are not a front for US Bancorp. They're a front for Bancorp Bank (http://www.thebancorp.com/), which is in fact a completely different and unrelated small bank.
> banks will have to follow a customer-centric approach and offer simple, user-friendly and effective products, with a high level of transparency and security
Simple is killing it on user-friendliness, and has the absolute best mobile and web banking interfaces I've ever used. They also tout the "very low operating costs" talked about in this article because they don't have a physical location.
To me, at the least, banking is taking deposits and making loans, neither of which Simple does by itself. It might provide a great front-end for another Bank which does those things, but I don't understand how that makes it the positioned for "future of banking", whatever that means to you.
There's a reason they're no longer called Bank Simple- because the law is very clear on what you can actually called a bank. Simple is not a bank.