You have a point, but you are missing a larger problem that is part of why the US financial system is regulated the way it is. Regulatory capture by the banks themselves. At this time the regulatory environment serves as much as a barrier to entry as it does protection for the consumer. All the "whips and bondage" compliance requirements are relatively easy to achieve if you're already a full-scale multi-billion dollar bank. But they are a formidable moat for any startup that needs to scale before they can afford to do all the necessary compliance auditing.
This is why simple.com is a friendly front-end for an existing financial institution and not a bank in it's own right.
Re:Introducing Snapcash
by kungfooguru on Monday November 17, 2014 @08:41PM
(#8621961)
So Europeans have better credit cards than us because they have less regulations? And New Zealanders have easy peer to peer transfers because of what less regulations?
And all of this could be more easily done by getting rid of banks except for a single federal bank.
Re:Introducing Snapcash
by seestheday on Tuesday November 18, 2014 @12:28PM
(#8624999)
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but there are thousands of banks in the US [1]. Getting rid of all of them except for a single federal bank is a gargantuan task.
1. http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023045794045792...
Payment innovation would have been drastically faster, were it not for the obscene regulations that are in place at both the Federal and State levels. PayPal ran into this brick wall while traveling at a high rate of speed, very early into its existence.