[stefanheule]

We have debated this question a fair bit at Financial Choice. I agree, the barrier does seem low, but also keep in mind that this is often the case for new companies, and the barrier is often higher than it seems for existing companies. For really established players, it's often hard to move fast (anyone who has worked at a big company probably knows this, there is often so much red tape).

But I also think for others, this is quite a mental shift on how to look at checking and investing accounts. There are some investment companies like Wealthfront and Betterment who are starting to move into checking accounts, but it feels very much like a afterthought to a customer.

We are hoping to truly unite the two account types.

[notahacker]

My suspicion is the main reason is that the costs of providing checking account functionality are high (banks subsidise this with penalty fees and marketing loans/mortgages and credit cards to their checking account customers as well as earning significantly higher returns oj their investment portfolio than they pay depositors). As much as in theory I'd love to hold money I might need to spend in the near future in fungible, low-risk government bonds, the middleman provides quite a lot of value in convenience.

Presumably you have put some thought into how you're going to manage these costs (beyond not providing branches) or what checking account functionality you are uninterested in providing.