[JustUhThought]

No doubt. Where does the assumption come from that banks aren't aware of this market. And how on earth does one compare near lawlessness of Facebook with the most heavily regulated sector of banking. Lastly, is the author completely unaware that not all business models try to maximize "eyeballs", or customers and that some attempt simply to maximixe revenue or profit.

[brickcap]

Great critiques! Please understand that when you write a pitch the tone has to be a bit assertive. It wasn't meant to be insulting but rather invigorating. However I apologize for any offence if might have caused. We didn't mean any of it.

Having said that you raise many important points. Let me try to respond to them

>Where does the assumption come from that banks aren't aware of this market.

I'll concede that they probably are aware of this market. Now we want to build a service that caters to this market. And in the process make a profit for everyone involved. We know that there are businesses like revolut that have proven a part of this concept. We want to take it further.

If the market has been observed, services have been shown to be deficient and the concept proposed has been shown to be working then it should be smooth sailing.

>"not all business models try to maximize "eyeballs", or customers and that some attempt simply to maximixe revenue or profit"

There may be some business that don't try to maximize eyeballs or customers. But banks are not one of them for sure. If you look at the history of original credit cards they were made popular by

>"mass mailing of unsolicited credit cards (actual working cards, not mere applications) to a large population.[1]

It has also been my personal observation that banks put on large advertisements to attract new customers based on attributes like interest rates and after a certain period of time these attributes get constant across banks. We are suggesting that it could be beneficial in the long run to look for a different set of customers.

>And how on earth does one compare near lawlessness of Facebook with the most heavily regulated sector of banking

But we didn't suggest any lawlessness!

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Inc.#History

[JustUhThought]

The credit card model is a major departure from classical banking, so I wouldn't consider it a valid counter argument here. And besides, credit cards aren't about maximizing eyeballs, they are about maximizing fees and revenue. And I wasn't suggesting you were advocating lawlessness, I was suggesting you were comparing apples to oranges. Facebook and banking are based on totally different business models.

Banking, proper, retail custmers, includes merchant banks, investment banks, money markets, M&A, public markets debt and equity, and such. The piece seemed to boil it down to retail banking.

[brickcap]

Point taken, though I disagree with your assertions that credit cards don't have much to do with classical banking and that they are not about promotion.

It's also true that banking services are entirely different from facebook. But the goals are similar.

I guess one way to restate my opinion in a couple of lines would be

There are markets and customers that are not immediately in the operational radius of a local bank. Any bank that can create offerings that would appeal to such markets would stand to gain profit.

Also to flip the discussion we could ask if facebook were to create a bank how would they do it?