I'm a Simple customer and incredibly upset by this decision. For those not familiar with their value add, Simple is essentially "envelope budgeting" built into a banking application. Sure, it's a bank and does bank things. What sets Simple apart is that I can allocate $n/month for an expense and it takes it out of my paycheck and puts it into that expense "envelope". When a charge comes in for that expense, it pulls from the envelope. Other budgeting tools like mvelopes.com and YNAB are great for visibility/tracking, but they don't move your money around. The alternative I used prior to finding Simple was having about 10 different checking accounts and manually transferring money every few weeks. I really don't want to go back to that setup after tasting the good life.
My pitch to the Simple team, or anyone interested in taking this on, is to take the app and build it on top of Stripe Treasury (https://stripe.com/treasury).
What additional benifit does moving money around provide?
From my perspective, there is not much difference between money moving around in the banking system vs moving around on your budget sheet, except the banking system might charge overdraft fees if the accounts are mismanaged.
Based on that reasoning I've taken the approach to only have as many bank accounts as I need to utilize their services, and to interact with them as little as nessecary.
I've always felt the same, but a few situations have required separate accounts:
- education savings accounts for children. There's some tax advantage to keeping them separate.
- a checking account for a personal assistant to pay bills from, limited to a few months cash
- when living together with separate finances, a household account that you both contribute to with a debit card. Convenient for splitting groceries, home improvement, etc. Otherwise, you have to keep receipts and settle regularly.
- if you're paying tax to 2 countries with a tax treaty, you may have to prove that you've already been taxed on money you're bringing in. It's best if you can do that from an account with only a single source of income, or else it gets complicated.
Counter-question: Does your operating system have all its files directly placed in "/"? Why not?
Human nature of thinking needs a context, therefore it makes sense to provide folders or categories to get an architectural structure into a huge amount of data that needs to be processed.
Additionally, if you need to manage a business account; having multiple accounts to balance the differences and to trace money expenses is common practice. The IRS or German Finanzamt (for example) won't even accept a simple budget sheet that lists all expenses.
I think it's a human thing - it works better with the brain if the money is "physically" in a different location (When in reality it makes no difference). It's the same why people actually use envelopes instead of just having a pile of money and a sheet of paper to note what is what.
For me it’s about a single source of truth. Paycheck comes in, it’s in my Safe-to-spend (i.e., not in a goal). I have a separate goal (virtual envelope) for each monthly bill. As I move the bill amount into that goal, it is removed from my safe-to-spend. I can quickly fill up my goals for all monthly expenses (water, electric, cell, etc) and once done, I know how much is left. I don’t have to worry about importing transactions or ensuring an external system is up-to-date and reconciled.
The only advantage I can see is for people who don't monitor their expenditure well so their purchases get denied when they try to spend too much on a particular thing. Otherwise, I agree, there are plenty of services and other banks that allow you to categorize transactions so you know how much you are spending on particular things.
I can't get myself to pay for services like YNAB or mvelopes.com
I could see someone wanting to pay for a year or two until they've established the habit of disciplined saving. But to perpetually pay a service to present a (useful) facade over your money doesn't seem right if it's not also instilling habits in you that don't depend on software.
I'm in the same boat. In a world before I found Simple, a spreadsheet with all of my monthly expenses and totals for each account transfer I needed to do was good enough. I can't get myself to see the additional value of mvelopes.com. Simple, however, was a game changer for me. Sad.
I pay for YNAB. For me it's worth it for their auto-import to take a quick look at my spending across accounts at various institutions and to look at larger trends over time. A lot of folks were annoyed when they went to a subscription model, but I think the visibility they provide really does pay for itself.
I've tried YNAB multiple times but would inevitably miss entering a transaction and then it would be a pain reconciling my bank accounts with YNAB. Without tracking the transactions I couldn't accurately use YNAB to determine how much was left in the budget.
Having an envelope like system built into a bank would be extremely useful.
I was forced to ditch Simple after their ridiculous application policies wouldn't allow my spouse to create an account for us to have a joint account. Since doing so, I've signed up for YouNeedABudget (YNAB) [1], and couldn't be happier. Simple was a great service and I'm sad it is calling quits, but I've outgrown it.
They used to have pay-once app.
Now you have to pay $12 a month and you are stuck in ecosystem that has your data and require payments forever. That is too steep, especially outside of USA.
I'll kill my first unnecessary expense by not buying it.
+1,000,000 for YNAB. It finally taught me that I don’t need to search for a bank with all the money management features I want, I just use YNAB to manage my money and I hardly care what bank account it sits in, it’s all “spent” in YNAB.
I’m a long time (2012) Simple customer and I went with them originally due to their new take on banking and the promise of an API (which they backtracked on). The envelope-type system they built with goals/expenses was nice but looks like a toy compared to YNAB. Now I can pick a new bank that doesn’t need to have any clever savings tools and just use it to hold my money.
I use Robinhood's banking feature for this (I don't use them as a brokerage, though). It lets me do direct deposit and automatic withrdrawals from a single account, while earning savings account interest. The interest isn't significant at the moment, but it was nice for a few months, before COVID. I use Mint and Personal Capital for monitoring my budget, rather than earmarking funds.
I do this. I've moved everything from my bank into RH because its far easier to play around with money to both deposit and withdraw. I'm seeing similar trends among my college friends.
Try Ally Bank for this. I use it in a similar way. They used to let you create a bunch of accounts but they now have "buckets" in their accounts. I find it pretty useful either way.
Simple's Safe-to-Spend® feature was ahead of its time and today is still a really unique feature among digital banks (standalone budgeting apps notwithstanding). I wonder if a challenger bank could buy that IP from BBVA.
It really is excellent. I’m finding with YNAB, I would micro manage every detail of my money. With safe to spend, I can carve out the major expenses like rent and debt payments automatically. Basically every recurring payment and savings goal. Then you know exactly how much extra you have for miscellaneous expenses. It’s a lot less work, and has basically been on autopilot for a while. I’m worried now that micromanaging a budget would be more stressful and time-intensive.
Being an online bank is largely unprofitable. You still have to operate the backend of a normal bank (which is costly) and you don't have the physical locations to enable the trust you need to get enough customers.
there's no money for them in doing that, they want you to borrow money (via credit card or other) and pay them back hopefully with interest that's how they make money
Just as a heads up, you can email support after your free trial and ask for an extension. They'll pretty much always give it to you. If you're a student, you can send in your student ID and get a year free. YNAB changed my life.
It's hard for them to do it and that is one of the reasons BBVA bought simple. Did it work? No, now they sell it.
Banks are too busy updating their legacy systems to process their batches. They are barely catching up with mobile applications and to show transactions in real time there so they do not have resources to implement this type of things.
Of course it is a matter of priority buy that is how it works now and traditional banks still have the power to drive the industry.
A few questions:
-Why do you need to actually move the money around?
-What happens if you overspend in an envelope?
-Do you actually have different accounts/routing numbers for the envelopes?
1. I want to move the money around so I don't spend it and I know I have enough to pay my bills. I don't want to see $1,000 and think "I'm going to spend that". Similarly, I don't want to see a charge come through for a bunch of bills that I don't have enough money for.
2. In Simple's app, if you overspend in an expense or goal, it takes it out of your "safe-to-spend" amount (think: your total spending money). It notifies you that you "overspent" so you can move money around in your little envelopes to fix it.
3. In Simple's case, you have one literal checking and up to two literal savings accounts. The expense/goal "envelopes" are virtual buckets in the checking account, not actual accounts with account/routing numbers. In the past, I've used many literal checking/savings accounts for this purpose.
Mentally, moving the money into different envelopes keeps you from spending money you don't have. Behind the scenes, I think they only use one bank account with one account number, but it helps you mentally keep track of where things should be.
You can specify daily transfers to slowly fill up an emergency fund or vacation. The beauty is when your car breaks down, you might have a repair fund that you can deduct from and you don't see your main balance drop.
But it's all just lipstick on a bank. When I used them, I think it was Bancorp, but they moved to a spanish bank when I hopped off.
For people who have no self control without resorting to playing tricks on themselves I guess. I can't empathize at all, all I need is a spreadsheet at most, but I guess it works for some people.
Does Stripe treasury actually enable people to build independent banks?
My understanding was that it was a way of enabling companies to offer bank like functionality to their existing users. For instance Uber could give drivers an "Uber" bank account.
Not that you could build your own bank on top of it...but perhaps I'm mistaken.
I think what he's saying is to just have a service that emulates what he described simplebank doing for him with Stripe Treasury and the banks that support it.
I've thoroughly enjoyed using Capital One's online banking for pretty much this. I have ~20 different savings accounts that I use for budgeting envelopes (you can have up to 25, I think) and each has their own routing/account numbers so you can set up services to pull directly from them and I set up automation to put $X in them from a "main" income account every 2 weeks, so I don't have to manually move money from account to account unless it's for something out of the ordinary. It effectively lets me set up envelope accounts that get automatically filled each month and automatically withdrawn from as charges happen, which is quite nice (and sounds similar to what Simple was doing?).
Dunno if it helps as a straight-up Simple replacement, but it works well for me so I thought I'd give them a shout out.
What are your “envelopes”/accounts and what do you actually do with them?
For example if you have a groceries envelope. How does that change anything for you? Would you buy more or less food at some point? Would you rebalance it at the end of the year? Is there some calculation of I are too spent too much this week so we’re making food?
I ask because I have a reasonable I does what I spend money on and it’s not really any surprise. My mortgage is x, if I owned on a car it would be y, if I’m out I buy food for the week, etc.
Privacy would be an addition on top of the envelope, where only one card can access the envelope. But Simple's UI hid the total value of everything (+ the envelope).
Yep! I use Privacy with almost all of my online transactions and have my Simple account setup as the funding source. That way I don’t give out my debit card number.
I recommend PNC's Virtual Wallet actually. It's not quite as nice as what you're describing here, but the main interface is a calendar which shows upcoming bill payments, scheduled ACH transfers, checks you've written, and your paycheck. It uses that to calculate a free balance before your next paycheck. It also has tools to schedule automatic transfers between accounts (checking/spend, reserve, and savings).
I've tried PNC, it is an absolute disaster in terms of website, app, fees, timeliness, etc. I have absolutely no idea why anyone would open an account with them.
What I had heard was that they had excellent customer support, but then they accidentally locked up my entire checking account for weeks and claimed they couldn't do anything, I just had to wait - until I literally contacted the CEO. I have, of course, since closed my account there.
I haven’t been a PNC customer in years but as I recall, their “Virtual Wallet” account allowed for similar functionality (not using an envelope concept, but by allocating/reserving money to various recurring expenses so you’d see an adjusted balance after factoring in those upcoming payments). I’m sure the service has changed in the past 5+ years since I used it, but it may be worth checking out. The only reason I left PNC was because I moved to a region where they didn’t have any physical branches.
The annoying part is going to the bank once a month to get the cash and then making sure you have the right denominations to easily distribute to each envelope. It took a few months for me to get used to it but my spending went way down.
You can make sure that a recurring transaction is always categorized to the same category and then that the money is taken from that “envelop” based on the category.
So my rent payment will always get automatically categorized to rent, and then all transactions in the rent category automatically pull from a specific “envelop”.
Envelops are just a UI/helpful budgeting thing; it’s not an actually different account.
Agreed. I've been using envelope budgeting since college and I simply can't fathom why most people don't do it. Actually, I can fathom it: it's because no one has been willing to keep this incredible feature in an easy-to-use product and support that product long enough for people to see the value.
After I got a bit tired of gnucash's relatively baroque interface I moved over to https://www.mvelopes.com, but I found it expensive, slow, and just not to my taste (it might be better now, this was still over a decade ago).
Next, I noticed this newfangled site called Mint.com. I liked it right away and even had a phone conversation with its founder about the envelope budgeting idea. He said he really liked it and would look into it but then of course Mint got acquired by Intuit and we all know what Intuit does to creative product ideas. I still use Mint to track net worth and cash flow but every time I open it I sigh at what could have been.
Some years ago I heard about Simple and was incredibly excited that an actual BANK finally grokked what was so obviously awesome about this idea. I signed up right away and for a few months enjoyed budgeting bliss. But I knew it was likely to end in corporate takeover sadness and so I avoided moving my accounts to it. This is a decision I regretted having to make, and regret being right about.
Some years ago I got the bug again and spoke to some startups who were trying to democratize the "connect to your bank API" space, which would let folks like me just make a tool ourselves and maybe productize it without having to look for VC funding just to afford the stupid license fees for bank connectivity. I had a few good conversations but no one else seemed anywhere near as excited about it as I was.
Fast forward to today: I work at a FAANG company doing interesting stuff and have pretty much abandoned my dream of doing finances this way. I've tried gnucash again. I've tried spreadsheets. I've tried custom personal programs. None of them are really good.
You REALLY want your bank to do this.
What you want is to tie this to your debit and credit cards and have them all pool from the same "virtual subaccounts".
What you want is to be able to have your credit card be declined if you go over budget (with an option to override).
What you want is to create a tree of accounts in under a second using your smartphone without having to fill out forms.
But you won't get it, it seems.
Product idea: A bank. With a a nice API. That's it. I'll take my startup idea equity now.
I'm not so sure you want your bank to do this, because there is no easy aggregate view if you have multiple banks and/or other accounts to track. I have I think 6 currently with no way to merge (curse of bouncing between countries).
Gnucash is as baroque as you say, but the only one of your options above that actually works and solves this problem (aggregate view) reasonably, of course that can't help you with things like virtual CC limit above. Still, it's much nicer than doing double entry with spreadsheets.
Your gnu cash article doesn't contain any screenshots so I'm sure you've spared us the horrors of looking at it but I feel like I can't trust you. I'll have to suffer through this myself, just to make sure.
If you take control of your finances in other ways, this system just isn't necessary. Set up automatic bill pay, set up recurring deposits into savings and investment accounts, use credit cards with the best rewards to pay for things (set to be fully paid off automatically every month), and then spend within your means so you don't live paycheck to paycheck. I suppose that last one is the thing that envelope budgeting/mental accounting is attempting to solve, but the problem is that it isn't actually solving the root cause. Spending smarter or at least not spending frivolously can free you from managing 25 different spending categories every day/week/month.
Revolut is like dealing with a shady loan shark dude that hangs out in an amusement arcade. One day he tells you one story, you can't get hold of him for a while, he sends you texts promising fantastic things and big discounts, then you track him down and the story has changed.
Dear HN crowd, don't waste your time and money with the sharks at Revolut, and be doubly wary of working for them.
To elaborate, Monzo has this envelope feature by allowing you to create "pots" and then set "Pay from this pot" for any recurring payments. I have separate pots for rent/bills/car. It also has a "Salary sorter" that will split your salary into the pots when you get paid (you just have to approve it).
None of that is available in the USA yet, but something to look out for if there isn't currently a US alternative.
FWIW, I tried to sign up for Revolut in US and was not able to proceed because I'm a TN Visa holder, and they don't have an option to use foreign passport + I94 to verify status like every other bank I've signed up for does. Contacted support as well and they couldn't do anything about it.
Was a pretty disappointing experience for a supposedly forward-thinking bank.
There is already a good Simple alternative called Envel.ai I believe. Its based on the same envelope system (hence Envel..) and has a more advanced budgeting engine...
Cash is fungible, it doesn’t matter where you put it. You’re also forgoing 1.5% cash back by not using a credit card and paying it off in full every month.
Check out Qube Money, they seem early stage but functioning. Once you sign up you can request to be in their Facebook beta testers group which is active.
the parent literally typed that they used to do just this, didn't have to anymore thanks to Simple, and didn't want to go back.
I'm also a bummed Simple customer and they made it so easy to set up buckets for literally anything with zero overhead, which encouraged a ton of saving from me.
I don't know how many Simple employees are in this thread. I'm very sad to hear this news, and I'm sure you were too. Just want you to know that you all made a really meaningful difference in the lives of at least my wife and I. Before I switched to Simple, I had a really hard time budgeting for things/planning for expenses, and was frequently toeing the line of overdrawing my account. I was essentially financially illiterate.
Simple made it incredibly easy for me to get my shit together and start being proactive with my money, so there was really no excuse to not do so. Now, my wife and I are well on our way to an early payoff on our mortgage (~18 years early), paying off our vehicle loans early (~2 years early), having a pretty good safety net in the bank, and being otherwise debt free.
So if you haven't heard it above the sadness of losing Simple: thank you. Seriously, thank you. You really did something great and you should all be proud of what you've accomplished.
I'd like to add to this. I used simple for a couple years back when it was first released, and it helped immensely in getting out of debt and on the right track. I've since moved on to other banks (at the time there were no joint accounts or savings, and I needed both), but I had friends reach out to me today in a panic because I'd recommend they use it over the years.
It was an excellent tool that absolutely improved my life and the lives of others I know personally.
I've used Simple since they became available on Android. At the time I had an account with Wells Fargo, but it was just a nightmare. I was working minimum wage, more or less paycheck to paycheck. I had been burned several times by those predatory overdraft fees, and they had started to introduce minimum balance fees.
Switching to Simple was a breath of fresh air. I didn't have to worry about any of those fees anymore. I could look at their tiny list of possible fees and know what to expect rather than having to deal with the nightmare of poor information that I had before. They saved me so much money, and helped me get out of the paycheck-to-paycheck spiral.
Like you the budgeting feature have been incredibly powerful for me too. Being able to hide away money without risking an overdraft or declined payment was a game changer.
Now I find myself in a very unfortunate position where I'm not even in the states so I'm not sure how I'm going to manage a switch to somebody else.
Depending on your mortgage interest rate, have you considered continuing the 18 years and investing your extra cash in index funds? Market returns ~10% over 20 years, so if your mortgage is 6% or less it's in your best 'interest' to continue.
Financially this makes sense. But for me, I’m sitting in a house that’s paid off. If I lose my job (or have to quit for medical reasons) and I can’t get a new job, I’ve got shelter. I can live Indefinitely where I am right now just paying utilities and property tax. Granted there is the reality of things just break on houses and require $$$.
Maybe it isn’t the best strategy. But there’s a nice feeling to know that I’ll have my house even if something bad happens.
And by bad I mean less than societal collapse. All bets are off in that situation.
This is good advice. A 30 year mortgage is like 2.8% right now, after taxes maybe 1.8%. The stock market over any 18 year time period (after taxes) will return higher than 1.8%. Adding to that, liquidity - having money in the bank provides flexibility, having equity in the house is nearly inflexible.
The market does not return 10% of 20 years, you may be referring to some period of U.S. returns, and many experts do not expect it to return so well over the next 20 years.
Yeah, even though that 10% is net tax 8.5% (vs. the full 6%) it seems like one could refinance it down in future. Still, I don't think most payment terms are flexible enough to make them an indefinite loan (go interest-only).
I loved Simple for a long time -- I was one of the "beta" customers -- but I switched away from them over a year ago. I'd already been annoyed with them over something seemingly trivial; I go by my middle name and last name, not first and last, and want my credit/debit card to match that, reading "Middle Last". Everyone else allows me to do this and Simple did allow that... until we all had to migrate our accounts from Simple's original "banking partner" to BBVA. At that point they changed my name and refused to change it back after multiple go-rounds (which ended with a rep telling me "sure, we can do this, just fill this out," filling said thing out, and being told "we can't do that").
As with some other mentions here, though, it was killing the ability to have Simple send checks to payees that did it for me. I'd been waiting for years to have Simple be able to accept ebills (e.g., receive a bill from a creditor that specifies an amount to pay and paying that, rather than just paying a fixed amount every period), and they never did; instead they regressed.
But here's the thing: while I'd left Bank of America because Simple's app and design was so much better, I'd never closed my BoA account for the simple (ha!) reason that they could accept ebills and pay them out of my Simple account. This always left me with the niggling feeling that while Simple was better at technology and customer service, BoA was better at... well... banking. And when I checked out BoA after getting fed up with Simple, well, their app was still ugly and had bad UX design, but the functionality had mostly caught up with Simple. It even has goals built into it, if I want them. (I don't, and never cared about Simple's equivalent, so I can't compare the functionality.)
And while there are "bank things" I only do once in a blue moon -- deposit at an ATM, get a cashier's check -- it turns out it's nice to have a bank that, well, does those things. I know there are other banks (and credit unions) that do them, too, and I'm not suggesting BoA is particularly good (or bad) in this regard.
Simple was a promising idea, but I think they made a serious mistake by letting themselves be bought out by BBVA. And while I'd love to see someone else try again, I'm going to be a lot more reticent to move to a new bank just because it gives me a terrific mobile app experience next time around. Simple was a great technology company, but at the end of the day, I just don't think they were that great a bank.
I'm in the exact same boat about my name. I have literally gotten up and left a physical bank when they refused to issue my debit card under "Middle Last" instead of "First Last". There's usually some BS about "the law requires that...", which prompts me to stop them mid-sentence and show them my AmEx and Visa that are titled "Middle Last".
No. Your setup may require me to go by an alias, but that's a quirk of your own shortsightedness and not a regulation.
Ya same here. The name issues, the killing of the ability to auto mail paper checks (bills), and seemingly over time extremely strict policies on everything from deposits, to addresses, Simple has already been going down hill for awhile.
Personally I have gone out of my way to submit polite and concise feedback, as I really wanted them to win. I used to be so happy here as a customer but inch by inch it had just become overwhelmingly unpleasant.
So over the last year I have slowly moved most of my banking to a competitor, and which as a whole is bigger and does have as smooth of a UX, but has been flawless with actual banking features. The support has made me feel like they actually want my business rather than being a nuisance to them.
It was good while it was good simple, I imagine running a bank is not easy, best of luck to everyone that was a part of it in their next venture.
I've had similar experiences with other institutions. The explanation boiled down to KYC policies and some relationship to newer DHS Real ID regulations.
So, what used to be allowed, is no longer. This might be true everywhere.
While I thought that might be the case, I got a credit card after this with my middle and last name. AFAIK, as long as the bank has both your true legal name on file and your preferred name on file, the card can be issued in your preferred name.
They made a $117 million exit when they sold to BBVA so maybe that was the time to jump ship cause they were no longer a start up and had to play by their new big bank owner's rules.
Same here. When the mail-a-check feature went away I switched back to the credit union. I still had that open because I couldn't set up a feature with simple.
There's a "Goals" section in my BoA app for my checking account which appears to let you set savings goals and target amounts. (I'll underline my "haven't tried it" disclaimer above, though! While I didn't use Simple's functionality for this, I recall it as being pretty well-designed, and design hasn't really been one of BoA's strengths...)
I've been a Simple customer since launch, and have used it as my primary bank since ING Direct was turned into Capital One.
It's mildly depressing to be reminded once again that the dream of startup founders these days isn't to build something, but to sell something... specifically to a bigger company. Which will inevitably delete the thing, once it serves its use. Which is to provide presence in some kind of defensive strategy.
I'm not sure what to use as my primary financial institution now. I have an account with my local credit union, but their app is mediocre. Simple's high quality app was the main reason I used Simple. I really just want an institution + app representation of such, that provides a 21st century experience.
I understand liking modern-feeling apps, but am more than happy to put up with the slightly old-feeling credit union app because they are just such a better institution - no bullshit fees, actually happy employees, far better rates on credit cards/loans... There's just no comparison.
I do have a commercial bank account, too, but that's just for access to quicker interchange with other commercial banks, when that's handy.
My worry with most credit unions is that most of the ones commonly recommended have requirements for who can be a member, or are geographically tied. I'm unlikely to live in the same city for as long as I'd want to keep a bank account, and I'm not military or otherwise. Do you have a good recommendation for a CU that's more generally an option?
Maybe I've just had bad luck but it seems like the credit unions I've tried are coasting on a reputation that is no longer deserved. Every one I have tried has behaved pretty much the same as any bank, except with worse apps, worse online banking, and worse ATM and branch availability. I can believe that there are great credit unions in the world, but I can tell you first hand that you can't just pick any random credit union and feel assured that they will be better than a major bank. Some of them are just as bad.
Former C1 employee: I would give Capital One another shot. Their tech and apps are best in class and and built in-house. They also contribute to the open source community (or did).
I beg to differ. Notifications for transactions stopped working. As I always do when things like this happen, I went to twitter and tweeted at them. They claim it works, yet replies on twitter beg to differ. They support people point me to a document that shows UI elements which have been removed.
Still broken. Still no word from them.
And there's the issue about financial software. A couple of years ago they stopped supporting what Moneydance uses. Basically, Cap One only supports Quicken. I would rather cut off my nose than use Quicken. I moved all my accounts to other banks after Moneydance stopped working. Problem is, my SO still has accounts there and the notification issue is a real problem, as she was not notified of fraudulent transactions due to their new bug.
I second this. I was an ING Direct customer who was rolled into a C1 360 account and it's honestly been great. It's just a consistently hassle-free experience. TBH, I mostly use a combination of Fidelity + Merrill Edge these days due to my particular cashflow management setup, but I keep my C1 360 account open for use every now and then. It's night and day between C1 360 and Chase, BofA, etc.
I've been really pleased with Capital One overall. The only thing that I wish could be resolved is that it can't be synced with You Need a Budget automatically.
How do I close old savings accounts in Capital One 360?
I used to have my savings split between several buckets, and now I just keep it all in one savings account, but I have four savings accounts with $0 in them because near as I can tell you aren't allowed to close them.
I want to be okay with Capital One, but the day I tried signing up for an account (a few years back), their entire application for applying (their application application) had a meltdown and their app crashed, etc, etc.
And then I thought, hmm, glad this happened before I had opened an account.
Capital One customer here! This is interesting to hear. Capital One's website is easily one of, if not the most annoying bank website I've engaged with in memory, inclusive of behemoths like BofA, regional banks, and a local credit union.
I was worried when ING Direct was bought by Capital One, but they never introduced any bullshit fees and seriously improved the app and website. So I've remained happy with them.
I'm a happy Schwab customer. Their app isn't what you would call simple, but you can do almost all your investing and banking there (I say almost because I own some physical assets) and they refund ATM withdrawal fees.
Most importantly, they do this (as well as priority mailing replacement cards) globally. I have yet to find another bank besides possibly Fidelity's checking account (?) that does this with no stated limit. It's invaluable for those who travel abroad to have access to local currencies with no hassles and a refund of all fees.
I'm also moving to Schwab mostly because my previous and current employer have stocks linked to that platform. TBH seems good enough for my use case (long term investing, mostly ETF)
I started out on ING Direct as well, but I stuck with it through the Capital One transition. Overall I'm still happy with the checking/savings account features, no maintenance fees etc. The mobile app/website is pretty good. However the "desktop" website is annoying as it's just a scaled up version of the mobile one, but it still gets the jobs done. Unfortunately they've removed the ability to easily add multiple savings accounts for budgeting, or at least I can't find a way to do it. Luckily I still have the ones I created back in the ING days.
You can open multiple high performance savings account by going to the normal account application online. It has you login partway through the process and then adds it to your account
I started out on ING Direct and also liked the savings account feature. I created several saving accounts for when some website wants ACH routing information but I don't trust very much: I can put just enough in that account to cover the transaction I want covered.
I didn't realize that they god rid of the ability to add new ones. I guess I'll have to make do with the eight I have lol.
Can you speak a bit more about this? I actually have a Fidelity cash account open but I have no idea how to access it. I’m open to it though if I’m just missing something.
I cannot blame the founders. They worked hard and risked a lot and were successful so they want to cash out.
Here's a radical idea. Maybe if countries care so much about keeping markets competitive, they could buy out late-stage startups to allow them to keep operating independently.
In our case, Simple was at the end of its runway and desperately needed a buyer after our primary angel backed out. BBVA was there at literally the last second (as in, we may not have been able to make the next payroll). So yeah, it wasn't really about the founders wanting to cash out; they desperately wanted to keep the idea going.
What tricks should I, as a founder of a company, maximize the valuation of my startup at government acqusition time, which revolving-door ex-regulator consultant should I hire to make sure my i's are dotted and t's crossed on all of my applications (and how expensive are they), who in the bureaucracy should I make friends with to ensure the smoothest possible acquisition.
Or you could reduce the barriers required for companies to go public/IPO.
What has changed over the last 20 years in the US is how much more expensive / difficult it has been for a company to go public. A lot of that is a result in 'consumer protections' that came into place after the .com bust and the financial crisis, but as with every short sighted government regulation, it has unintended consequences.
The GreenDot competitor to Simple, GoBank, launched around the same time as "the first digital / app based bank." It was corporate from the outset, but their partnership with WalMart seemed to reorient it into an internet based check cashing shop complete with cringeworthy "sweepstakes" offers for connecting your direct deposit. The product went downhill abruptly around that time, I still keep it around as an extra debit account so I get some ongoing visibility to the spiral. I have to call a special support number printed on my card, newer customers called the one on the website. The oft-promised chip supporting GoBank card still has not arrived for me, today, in 2020, despite their support promising me literally years ago it would be available in a month. It doesn't work with Apple Pay.
The app, which when they launched was one of the first decent bank apps, simply has disabled its most compelling features. You used to be able to peek your balance without signing in, the slider is still there but it doesn't do anything. Fortunately most other mainstream banks have great apps these days.
The app still lacks FaceID support. You can use FaceID only through the Apple autofill keyring.
And as I just Googled them to make this post, I see there will never be a chip card at all because GoBank doesn't offer a debit card anymore. Apparently GreenDot is powering payments at Uber and Apple Pay P2P now though, so good for them.
If you're a veteran or the child of a veteran, highly recommend USAA. Tech is fairly good (they had online deposit years before anyone else I was aware of) and the service is unbeatable.
My roommate is a USAA account holder. They are a bank that is willing to tell PayPal to pound sand when necessary, and they gain a ton of respect for that.
Unfortunately though, they have some kind of inane limitation on debit cards that don't let you have more than a certain number of pending transactions. And given that you generally won't know and never can control when a place that runs your card actually captures, it's led to some nasty surprises.
Any US citizen can get a USAA checking account, and it's quite usable with a decent Android app and the ability to easily transfer money around from different banks. Some of their other services, like car loans, are only available to members of the military, though.
I also used ING Direct, and switched to Simple when it turned into Capital One. About three years ago, I switched from simple.com to ally.com, and it's been pretty great.
I'd suggest Bank of America if you have more than $100k in stocks or index funds that you can move to Merrill. That qualifies you for free ATM refunds, and gives you access to unlimited 2.6% cash back on all credit card purchases.
For what it's worth, Chase really stepped their design game up for mobile and responsive web. The weekly money insights report is a great summary of my overall banking activity. Check it out in the app store.
BBVA is also closing Azlo, the business bank that Stripe Atlas uses (used?) for LLCs. Looks to me like BBVA is attempting to annoy as many customers as possible.
I love Simple to death. They overnighted a cashier's cheque for me, for free, on holiday. They've been nothing but kind and I truly hate to see them go. I really really loved being a Simple customer.
Simple has been my only checking account since 2011. I think I learned about them on HN. The UI is snappy and slick and their support team have always gone above and beyond. They're really the model for what a checking account should be.
I liked Simple’s UI and budgeting tools a lot, especially the “safe to spend” thing, but I don’t think running everything directly from a checking account is wise. It’s really better to have a credit card that you pay off every month, with solid fraud protection and rewards, and touch your debit card as little as possible. Simple’s snazzy software is not too useful when you do that. I ended up using a traditional checking account and YNAB.
I've used Simple since 2014 and it's easily the best banking experience I have ever had. I've spread my spending and banking activity out over different banks/services over the years, but I always use Simple as my main bank. Honestly not sure where I will move my main account over to.
So many valuable businesses have been destroyed by investors or founders seeking an early exit.
If you are an entrepreneur, think very long and hard before you accept any outside money. I have seen so many good businesses forced to sell by investors or a founder who thought they were done, only to regret it later.
That's surprising to me, one time my card got blocked because I used it at (I guess?) a sketchy ATM. I called them but they had zero customer service outside of business hours. Opened up a Chase account after that.
I have a very ordinary LLC and Novo rejected my application for no obvious reason, with no details whatsoever. I don't think I have anything unusual going on, so IDK how easy they actually are to work with.
Mercury is another option but my experience has been that some of their offerings are at best misleading (I would argue they're deceptive), and they can't do normal things like export a QBX statement to reconcile into Netsuite, you have to write your own stuff from scratch using their API.
I switched from Simple to USAA, and have been really happy with their customer service. Their app sucks compared to Simple, though, but that’s probably true of 100% of banking apps.
Thanks to the countless folks that built a customer focused bank. It's really sad to see Simple wind down, and it's been the best bank I've had the chance to use. Their service has been unmatched compared even to the best local banks in my area. I've been a customer for nearly a decade now - wow. Early on I exchanged emails with Josh and the team not just regarding banking matters, but reporting bugs, design issues, or giving feedback. They were always receptive and I appreciated that they took the time to respond to my messages.
They had downtime once and credited my account $50. Simple, I know, but it was a gesture that really set them apart and humanized the company.
Thank you for starting Simple. Thank you Josh and the rest of the team at Simple: Shamir, Ian C., Brian M1, Toby, Adam, Rachel, Tom, Dustin, Zac, John, Ryan H., Melissa, Ian E., James, Liene, Collin, Matt S., Daron, Cameron, Eric, Jarred, Chris B., Shane, Dan H., Dan D., Robyn, Ryan D., Will M., Brian M2, Michael M., Chelsea, Kelly, Tristan, Will C., Justin, Steven, Matt W., Chris S., Charlie, Mimi, Orlena, Michael E., Krista, Bar, Jen, Matt H., Jake, Matt M.
:')
PS: Startup marketing tip - Add a call to action at the bottom of your email newsletter that reminds your customers to share their experience with their friends and colleagues. Here was Simple's:
> PS - We often have people ask how they can help us continue to grow. Firstly, you're awesome, thanks for asking! Secondly, Its easy–just tell your friends! In fact, you can even send referrals directly from our mobile apps.
It used to be amazing. You could start a real time text chat even in the middle of the night, and they were so helpful, professional and friendly, and followed up when they said they would. It was shocking and wonderful.
I used and was happy with Simple from the very beginning, right up to the point they removed the check sending facility.
It wasn’t the removal of the facility itself that caused me to leave.
It was the utterly disingenuous statement from the CEO explaining the removal.
They got a lot of pushback on this, and ultimately the CEO wrote a defensive followup which was slightly more honest, but confirmed his original disingenuity.
If Simple had sold itself as a normal bank this would have been business as usual. Not good but not unexpected.
However their original sales pitch was all about how they were going to be more honest.
It’s worth noting that this happened soon after they were acquired by BBVA and had a new CEO.
I've been a Simple customer for awhile and it's kind of a bummer and kind of a hassle that this is happening.
I became a customer many years ago while I was homeless and due to a string of incredibly bad luck and wildly poor decision making, I had been unable to open a checking account at any major bank. For whatever reason they gave me one.
Not having to walk 3+ miles to pick up cash from a Wells Fargo spot and having a debit card were literally lifechanging differences.
Nearly a decade later I'm in a much better place. Thanks, Simple.
Not sure if you still have those marks on your record preventing you from opening a checking account, but basically all of the online banks do not check records to open an account (as of today.) So even with wrecked credit, a bad ChexSystems/EWS report etc, you can still get an account.
Perhaps this might also be useful for anyone reading this who is in a similar situation today.
I'll be moving to another bank and I'm no longer in a position where I have to worry about stuff that happened back then. It's just kinda sad losing the bank that I've used for basic checking from living under an overpass all the way through home ownership. :(
Readit News
My pitch to the Simple team, or anyone interested in taking this on, is to take the app and build it on top of Stripe Treasury (https://stripe.com/treasury).
From my perspective, there is not much difference between money moving around in the banking system vs moving around on your budget sheet, except the banking system might charge overdraft fees if the accounts are mismanaged.
Based on that reasoning I've taken the approach to only have as many bank accounts as I need to utilize their services, and to interact with them as little as nessecary.
- education savings accounts for children. There's some tax advantage to keeping them separate.
- a checking account for a personal assistant to pay bills from, limited to a few months cash
- when living together with separate finances, a household account that you both contribute to with a debit card. Convenient for splitting groceries, home improvement, etc. Otherwise, you have to keep receipts and settle regularly.
- if you're paying tax to 2 countries with a tax treaty, you may have to prove that you've already been taxed on money you're bringing in. It's best if you can do that from an account with only a single source of income, or else it gets complicated.
Human nature of thinking needs a context, therefore it makes sense to provide folders or categories to get an architectural structure into a huge amount of data that needs to be processed.
Additionally, if you need to manage a business account; having multiple accounts to balance the differences and to trace money expenses is common practice. The IRS or German Finanzamt (for example) won't even accept a simple budget sheet that lists all expenses.
I could see someone wanting to pay for a year or two until they've established the habit of disciplined saving. But to perpetually pay a service to present a (useful) facade over your money doesn't seem right if it's not also instilling habits in you that don't depend on software.
It also lets you track all expenses and let’s you keep lifestyle inflation in check.
I’ve found it well worth it (and I’m pretty responsible financially).
Mint on the other hand is totally useless.
[1] https://www.youneedabudget.com/
I’m a long time (2012) Simple customer and I went with them originally due to their new take on banking and the promise of an API (which they backtracked on). The envelope-type system they built with goals/expenses was nice but looks like a toy compared to YNAB. Now I can pick a new bank that doesn’t need to have any clever savings tools and just use it to hold my money.
I was using the goals in the beginning, but the rates just kept going down.
Banks are too busy updating their legacy systems to process their batches. They are barely catching up with mobile applications and to show transactions in real time there so they do not have resources to implement this type of things.
Of course it is a matter of priority buy that is how it works now and traditional banks still have the power to drive the industry.
1. I want to move the money around so I don't spend it and I know I have enough to pay my bills. I don't want to see $1,000 and think "I'm going to spend that". Similarly, I don't want to see a charge come through for a bunch of bills that I don't have enough money for.
2. In Simple's app, if you overspend in an expense or goal, it takes it out of your "safe-to-spend" amount (think: your total spending money). It notifies you that you "overspent" so you can move money around in your little envelopes to fix it.
3. In Simple's case, you have one literal checking and up to two literal savings accounts. The expense/goal "envelopes" are virtual buckets in the checking account, not actual accounts with account/routing numbers. In the past, I've used many literal checking/savings accounts for this purpose.
You can specify daily transfers to slowly fill up an emergency fund or vacation. The beauty is when your car breaks down, you might have a repair fund that you can deduct from and you don't see your main balance drop.
But it's all just lipstick on a bank. When I used them, I think it was Bancorp, but they moved to a spanish bank when I hopped off.
My understanding was that it was a way of enabling companies to offer bank like functionality to their existing users. For instance Uber could give drivers an "Uber" bank account.
Not that you could build your own bank on top of it...but perhaps I'm mistaken.
Dunno if it helps as a straight-up Simple replacement, but it works well for me so I thought I'd give them a shout out.
For example if you have a groceries envelope. How does that change anything for you? Would you buy more or less food at some point? Would you rebalance it at the end of the year? Is there some calculation of I are too spent too much this week so we’re making food?
I ask because I have a reasonable I does what I spend money on and it’s not really any surprise. My mortgage is x, if I owned on a car it would be y, if I’m out I buy food for the week, etc.
Privacy is a proxy, not the destination.
Their landing page for the product is absolutely awful: https://www.pnc.com/en/personal-banking/virtual-wallet-overv...
You can see screenshots of at least the mobile version on the play store though: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pnc.ecomme...
What I had heard was that they had excellent customer support, but then they accidentally locked up my entire checking account for weeks and claimed they couldn't do anything, I just had to wait - until I literally contacted the CEO. I have, of course, since closed my account there.
Qube Money and Envel.ai seem to be the most similar competitors after searching for a bit.
Here's an article on Qube Money's website: https://blog.qubemoney.com/leaving-simple-bank-heres-why-qub...
In that article, there's a link to a Google Sheet that someone on Reddit created comparing alternatives: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/2/d/1Etr8dGtviSRpdAjR...
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0721TMDCL/
The annoying part is going to the bank once a month to get the cash and then making sure you have the right denominations to easily distribute to each envelope. It took a few months for me to get used to it but my spending went way down.
Do you categorize the expense or is it automatically categorized to the correct spending envelope?
---
Treasury is B2B focused at the moment but there must be another way to do this...
So my rent payment will always get automatically categorized to rent, and then all transactions in the rent category automatically pull from a specific “envelop”.
Envelops are just a UI/helpful budgeting thing; it’s not an actually different account.
In college I used gnucash for this and even wrote a (now very old and somewhat embarrassing) article about it (https://organicdesign.nz/A_day_in_the_life_of_a_dollar).
After I got a bit tired of gnucash's relatively baroque interface I moved over to https://www.mvelopes.com, but I found it expensive, slow, and just not to my taste (it might be better now, this was still over a decade ago).
Next, I noticed this newfangled site called Mint.com. I liked it right away and even had a phone conversation with its founder about the envelope budgeting idea. He said he really liked it and would look into it but then of course Mint got acquired by Intuit and we all know what Intuit does to creative product ideas. I still use Mint to track net worth and cash flow but every time I open it I sigh at what could have been.
Some years ago I heard about Simple and was incredibly excited that an actual BANK finally grokked what was so obviously awesome about this idea. I signed up right away and for a few months enjoyed budgeting bliss. But I knew it was likely to end in corporate takeover sadness and so I avoided moving my accounts to it. This is a decision I regretted having to make, and regret being right about.
Some years ago I got the bug again and spoke to some startups who were trying to democratize the "connect to your bank API" space, which would let folks like me just make a tool ourselves and maybe productize it without having to look for VC funding just to afford the stupid license fees for bank connectivity. I had a few good conversations but no one else seemed anywhere near as excited about it as I was.
Fast forward to today: I work at a FAANG company doing interesting stuff and have pretty much abandoned my dream of doing finances this way. I've tried gnucash again. I've tried spreadsheets. I've tried custom personal programs. None of them are really good.
You REALLY want your bank to do this.
What you want is to tie this to your debit and credit cards and have them all pool from the same "virtual subaccounts".
What you want is to be able to have your credit card be declined if you go over budget (with an option to override).
What you want is to create a tree of accounts in under a second using your smartphone without having to fill out forms.
But you won't get it, it seems.
Product idea: A bank. With a a nice API. That's it. I'll take my startup idea equity now.
Gnucash is as baroque as you say, but the only one of your options above that actually works and solves this problem (aggregate view) reasonably, of course that can't help you with things like virtual CC limit above. Still, it's much nicer than doing double entry with spreadsheets.
- Monzo and Revolut are better products
- they discriminate against permanent residents who are not citizens (you can’t use their service)
So from my point of view: heh
Dear HN crowd, don't waste your time and money with the sharks at Revolut, and be doubly wary of working for them.
None of that is available in the USA yet, but something to look out for if there isn't currently a US alternative.
Was a pretty disappointing experience for a supposedly forward-thinking bank.
I'm also a bummed Simple customer and they made it so easy to set up buckets for literally anything with zero overhead, which encouraged a ton of saving from me.
Simple made it incredibly easy for me to get my shit together and start being proactive with my money, so there was really no excuse to not do so. Now, my wife and I are well on our way to an early payoff on our mortgage (~18 years early), paying off our vehicle loans early (~2 years early), having a pretty good safety net in the bank, and being otherwise debt free.
So if you haven't heard it above the sadness of losing Simple: thank you. Seriously, thank you. You really did something great and you should all be proud of what you've accomplished.
It was an excellent tool that absolutely improved my life and the lives of others I know personally.
Well done.
Switching to Simple was a breath of fresh air. I didn't have to worry about any of those fees anymore. I could look at their tiny list of possible fees and know what to expect rather than having to deal with the nightmare of poor information that I had before. They saved me so much money, and helped me get out of the paycheck-to-paycheck spiral.
Like you the budgeting feature have been incredibly powerful for me too. Being able to hide away money without risking an overdraft or declined payment was a game changer.
Now I find myself in a very unfortunate position where I'm not even in the states so I'm not sure how I'm going to manage a switch to somebody else.
Maybe it isn’t the best strategy. But there’s a nice feeling to know that I’ll have my house even if something bad happens.
And by bad I mean less than societal collapse. All bets are off in that situation.
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As with some other mentions here, though, it was killing the ability to have Simple send checks to payees that did it for me. I'd been waiting for years to have Simple be able to accept ebills (e.g., receive a bill from a creditor that specifies an amount to pay and paying that, rather than just paying a fixed amount every period), and they never did; instead they regressed.
But here's the thing: while I'd left Bank of America because Simple's app and design was so much better, I'd never closed my BoA account for the simple (ha!) reason that they could accept ebills and pay them out of my Simple account. This always left me with the niggling feeling that while Simple was better at technology and customer service, BoA was better at... well... banking. And when I checked out BoA after getting fed up with Simple, well, their app was still ugly and had bad UX design, but the functionality had mostly caught up with Simple. It even has goals built into it, if I want them. (I don't, and never cared about Simple's equivalent, so I can't compare the functionality.)
And while there are "bank things" I only do once in a blue moon -- deposit at an ATM, get a cashier's check -- it turns out it's nice to have a bank that, well, does those things. I know there are other banks (and credit unions) that do them, too, and I'm not suggesting BoA is particularly good (or bad) in this regard.
Simple was a promising idea, but I think they made a serious mistake by letting themselves be bought out by BBVA. And while I'd love to see someone else try again, I'm going to be a lot more reticent to move to a new bank just because it gives me a terrific mobile app experience next time around. Simple was a great technology company, but at the end of the day, I just don't think they were that great a bank.
No. Your setup may require me to go by an alias, but that's a quirk of your own shortsightedness and not a regulation.
Personally I have gone out of my way to submit polite and concise feedback, as I really wanted them to win. I used to be so happy here as a customer but inch by inch it had just become overwhelmingly unpleasant.
So over the last year I have slowly moved most of my banking to a competitor, and which as a whole is bigger and does have as smooth of a UX, but has been flawless with actual banking features. The support has made me feel like they actually want my business rather than being a nuisance to them.
It was good while it was good simple, I imagine running a bank is not easy, best of luck to everyone that was a part of it in their next venture.
I've had similar experiences with other institutions. The explanation boiled down to KYC policies and some relationship to newer DHS Real ID regulations.
So, what used to be allowed, is no longer. This might be true everywhere.
It's mildly depressing to be reminded once again that the dream of startup founders these days isn't to build something, but to sell something... specifically to a bigger company. Which will inevitably delete the thing, once it serves its use. Which is to provide presence in some kind of defensive strategy.
I'm not sure what to use as my primary financial institution now. I have an account with my local credit union, but their app is mediocre. Simple's high quality app was the main reason I used Simple. I really just want an institution + app representation of such, that provides a 21st century experience.
I do have a commercial bank account, too, but that's just for access to quicker interchange with other commercial banks, when that's handy.
Still broken. Still no word from them.
And there's the issue about financial software. A couple of years ago they stopped supporting what Moneydance uses. Basically, Cap One only supports Quicken. I would rather cut off my nose than use Quicken. I moved all my accounts to other banks after Moneydance stopped working. Problem is, my SO still has accounts there and the notification issue is a real problem, as she was not notified of fraudulent transactions due to their new bug.
How do I close old savings accounts in Capital One 360?
I used to have my savings split between several buckets, and now I just keep it all in one savings account, but I have four savings accounts with $0 in them because near as I can tell you aren't allowed to close them.
And then I thought, hmm, glad this happened before I had opened an account.
https://ally.com/
Most importantly, they do this (as well as priority mailing replacement cards) globally. I have yet to find another bank besides possibly Fidelity's checking account (?) that does this with no stated limit. It's invaluable for those who travel abroad to have access to local currencies with no hassles and a refund of all fees.
The banks that do that, usually also have the worse investing options (e.g. Schwab, HSBC...)
I didn't realize that they god rid of the ability to add new ones. I guess I'll have to make do with the eight I have lol.
However maybe you have a model in mind that doesn’t result in control ending up in the hands of the government.
If so, I’m curious!
What has changed over the last 20 years in the US is how much more expensive / difficult it has been for a company to go public. A lot of that is a result in 'consumer protections' that came into place after the .com bust and the financial crisis, but as with every short sighted government regulation, it has unintended consequences.
The app, which when they launched was one of the first decent bank apps, simply has disabled its most compelling features. You used to be able to peek your balance without signing in, the slider is still there but it doesn't do anything. Fortunately most other mainstream banks have great apps these days.
The app still lacks FaceID support. You can use FaceID only through the Apple autofill keyring.
And as I just Googled them to make this post, I see there will never be a chip card at all because GoBank doesn't offer a debit card anymore. Apparently GreenDot is powering payments at Uber and Apple Pay P2P now though, so good for them.
Unfortunately though, they have some kind of inane limitation on debit cards that don't let you have more than a certain number of pending transactions. And given that you generally won't know and never can control when a place that runs your card actually captures, it's led to some nasty surprises.
Any commercial software based service like this needs to be a contract with consumer society.
I’ve since moved everything to Fidelity and it’s probably the best option.
Their software could be better, but it’s good enough and the other options are worse.
https://frugalprofessor.com/best-credit-card-rewards-strateg...
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I love Simple to death. They overnighted a cashier's cheque for me, for free, on holiday. They've been nothing but kind and I truly hate to see them go. I really really loved being a Simple customer.
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Simple has been my only checking account since 2011. I think I learned about them on HN. The UI is snappy and slick and their support team have always gone above and beyond. They're really the model for what a checking account should be.
If you are an entrepreneur, think very long and hard before you accept any outside money. I have seen so many good businesses forced to sell by investors or a founder who thought they were done, only to regret it later.
I think this is the weird case of BBVA closing their sort of B2B Banking business (underwriting?).
What annoys me more is that whatever BBVA has to "replace" Azlo (or presumably Simple) will likely be worse in every way.
[1] https://banknovo.com
Mercury is another option but my experience has been that some of their offerings are at best misleading (I would argue they're deceptive), and they can't do normal things like export a QBX statement to reconcile into Netsuite, you have to write your own stuff from scratch using their API.
They had downtime once and credited my account $50. Simple, I know, but it was a gesture that really set them apart and humanized the company.
Thank you for starting Simple. Thank you Josh and the rest of the team at Simple: Shamir, Ian C., Brian M1, Toby, Adam, Rachel, Tom, Dustin, Zac, John, Ryan H., Melissa, Ian E., James, Liene, Collin, Matt S., Daron, Cameron, Eric, Jarred, Chris B., Shane, Dan H., Dan D., Robyn, Ryan D., Will M., Brian M2, Michael M., Chelsea, Kelly, Tristan, Will C., Justin, Steven, Matt W., Chris S., Charlie, Mimi, Orlena, Michael E., Krista, Bar, Jen, Matt H., Jake, Matt M.
:')
PS: Startup marketing tip - Add a call to action at the bottom of your email newsletter that reminds your customers to share their experience with their friends and colleagues. Here was Simple's:
> PS - We often have people ask how they can help us continue to grow. Firstly, you're awesome, thanks for asking! Secondly, Its easy–just tell your friends! In fact, you can even send referrals directly from our mobile apps.
Deleted Comment
It wasn’t the removal of the facility itself that caused me to leave.
It was the utterly disingenuous statement from the CEO explaining the removal.
They got a lot of pushback on this, and ultimately the CEO wrote a defensive followup which was slightly more honest, but confirmed his original disingenuity.
If Simple had sold itself as a normal bank this would have been business as usual. Not good but not unexpected.
However their original sales pitch was all about how they were going to be more honest.
It’s worth noting that this happened soon after they were acquired by BBVA and had a new CEO.
I very much appreciated the straight talk at every level from their corporate communications to their support agents.
I don’t think it’s fair to be cynical about them in a more general sense.
It’s just a classic problem with the model of acquisitions, and a misaligned new CEO.
I became a customer many years ago while I was homeless and due to a string of incredibly bad luck and wildly poor decision making, I had been unable to open a checking account at any major bank. For whatever reason they gave me one.
Not having to walk 3+ miles to pick up cash from a Wells Fargo spot and having a debit card were literally lifechanging differences.
Nearly a decade later I'm in a much better place. Thanks, Simple.
Perhaps this might also be useful for anyone reading this who is in a similar situation today.