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"

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/

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.

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.?

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.

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.

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.

How is this better than a credit union?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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!

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.

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.

Did Chase very clearly explain that they could, allegedly, shuffle your transactions into a fictitious sequence in order to maximize the amount of fees they could charge you?¹

My bank didn't tell me that in the event the Post Office became confused and stopped delivering my mail (commercial address, only gets the bank stuff), they would make no effort to contact me when the checks and statements started coming back. Though, when they forgot to transfer money into my new accounts they did agree to waive the penalties I had incurred, so that was sort of nice that they didn't pursue a fee which would have lost them a court case.

I think this sentence from the article sums up the motivation…

   “Banks make money by keeping customers confused,” Mr. Reich said. “There’s no incentives to make the experience better.”

Your bank no doubt has dozens of different kinds of accounts with various byzantine rules applied to each. Is there a button on your online banking page that says "Recommend the optimum account plans for me."? They know your history, they pretty much know your future. They know their own plans. They have computers… what is stopping them?

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¹ http://www.topclassactions.com/open/2603-chase-overdraft-fee...

My annoyance is that I signed up for "free checking for life", and now I have a checking account that has monthly fees! I signed up for Washington Mutual for that reason. At some point, Chase purchased their banking operations, and retained the legacy free-checking accounts. But some time after that, they decided to no longer continue to honor those terms, and added a monthly fee. Now they'll charge me a $10 fee in any month that I allow my balance to drop below $1500. I did not opt into that. Now I have to opt out by closing my account.

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.

Overdraft fees are shit. The best banks just give you a line of credit that's hooked up to your checking account that it automatically draws on in case of overdraft, leaving you with nothing to pay but a few cents interest. Or at least let you automatically hook your savings account up so it automatically throws a chunk of money into your checking account when you overdraft.

Fees in general are shit. Another example: ATM fees. Decent banks don't charge ATM fees. The best banks not only don't charge ATM fees, but if the ATM itself charges a fee, the bank refunds you the money themselves.

Also shit: minimum balances. Chase waives the minimum balance if you have a direct deposit, except I don't want to direct deposit into my checking account. I want to direct deposit into my savings account to use as a buffer. Then, every month, I can withdraw only that month's budgeted amount into my checking accounts. And since I only withdraw the budgeted amount every month, the balance should be 0 at the end of the month, which is why I don't want to worry about overdrafts.

Maybe your use case is different from mine, but the fact is, all the terms I'm asking for are available on the market already and I don't have time or patience for banks that don't accommodate me when they have competitors who will.

I'm very particular about how I do my banking -- money in a mix of a huge corporate bank and a small, local credit union; both serve unique purposes for my needs.

By far, the customer service at the credit union is infinitely better than that of the large bank. I call customer service at the big bank with small issues or questions, and I'm extremely irritated by the time I'm even speaking with a real person after a terrible mix of phone mazes and hold music. My credit union is normally on the phone after 2-3 rings and almost immediately takes care of whatever I need.

I'd much prefer to move everything to the credit union, but I just have certain convenience needs that most bigger banks just handle better due to their larger infrastructure.

Wells Fargo did their best (and eventually succeeded) to drive me away from having a checking account with them. I wanted to use it as a secondary checking account (my main one is with a local credit union) with a wider reach ATM/deposit-acceptance wise, and they wanted me to first jump through hoops to avoid a monthly fee if I wasn't receiving direct deposits on that account, and then eventually even those hoops weren't enough and they put a fee on it.

I suspect there may be a bit of sensationalism built into this article. That being said, their certainly are plenty of things with current banks to be less than pleased with, including a not so distant past when overdraft fees were not opt in, and even worse, were handled in a devious fashion. (I.E. applying charges to an account in order of the total amount spent as opposed to chronologically).

I bank with Schwab and Chase, and also have had very few reasons to switch. With direct deposit, automatic bill payment and credit card balance paid in full automatically I rarely have a reason to log on to the bank site or app. My HOA is the bigger annoyance factor here, as they change the fees once a year, so I need to remind myself to change the amount of automatic withdrawal.

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.

I have only had great experiences so far with their customer service. Let me count the ways:

1. My girlfriend really wanted to join too. I sent them a message about this and they sent her an invite that day (this was before invitation were available to current customers).

2. They emailed me to ask why I wasn't using my account. I said I don't have direct deposit because I'm a freelancer, so it didn't make sense for me to use until they had check deposit. They said that makes sense, and a few weeks later they invited me to beta test their check deposit feature.

3. I asked about the possibility of giving goals the ability to withdraw a percentage of check deposited rather than a certain amount every day, since my income is variable. I got a response from someone saying they had just put in a request for that feature, and it should be on the horizon.

4. They've happily answered all sorts of weird questions regarding my particular circumstances, and indulged me more than any customer service people I've ever talked to.

This service is not perfect yet, but every indication I've seen suggests everyone there really wants to do well, and they really are trying to build a customer focused bank. After trying it out for a few months, I'm planning on moving most of my banking to my simple account.