A better alternative to starting a new bank is buying a small bank. It may actually be cheaper than starting a new one.
Both my personal and business accounts are with these, and it's awesome. Starling for my personal account and Tide for the business one. I get notifications of payments usually before the in-store machine has finished sorting itself out. Also get nice things like being able to use Google Pay before the card arrives. I've just got married, and our joint account will be one of these.
I assume these banks have popped up from these EU regulations, as they didn't exist 3 years ago.
- Extremely high ($10 billion plus) market opportunity, with a ~0.1% to ~1% capital requirement.
- Recruit a team with the highly diverse skills needed to operate a modern bank.
- Have a secure location? Let us pay you to leverage assets from another startup.
- Extremely high starting capital requirements (10-100 million USD)
- Knowledge on security, finance, and law, means you will be needing an expert team of lawyers, accountants, cryptographers, etc.
- An actual location and strictly controlled building to keep the physical money.
There are a lot more requirements but the first 3 make it almost impossible for a lay-man to start their own bank.