[johnnygood]

Banking is a highly regulated industry and so products usually stop at national borders. Even banks that operate in multiple countries (RBS/Citizens, Santander/Sovereign, HSBC, etc.) basically operate as separate companies in each country.

It's expensive and time consuming to comply with so much regulation. If BankSimple does well, I'm sure they'd be happy to expand internationally, but at this point it's questionable whether the public will gravitate to BankSimple. If they tried to launch in multiple countries from day 1, they'd be spreading resources very thin dealing with all the different laws. This way, they can launch, be successful, and expand.

In some ways it's like physical businesses. You wouldn't expect a new fast-food chain to launch with 50,000 stores worldwide, would you? Unlike the web which is decently universal, they need to wait a little to catch on and grow.