[ctdean]

Getting a new banking charter in the US is hard, but it's straightforward to be a challenger bank in the UK. Jarvis moved (back) to London from SF to start Griffin.

The banks in the US that have APIs tend to focus on large fintech partnerships, so even simple APIs will be expensive compared to a regular bank account. Grasshopper Bank in the US (for example) is one of the few that will do APIs on top of regular commercial bank accounts.

(I work at Treasury Prime, which powers many US banks that do APIs.)

[venantius]

It’s hard in the UK too! Just not “infeasible” hard. (Plus, it’s easier to finance as you don’t have those pesky Bank Holding Company Act regs dinging your investors)

[ensignavenger]

I see new banks popping up all the time in the US. I would enjoy seeing a comparison of the process in the US vs the UK.

[ghayes]

Do you mean Neobanks that generally attach to existing banks through partnerships? The OCC nearly stopped granting de novo banking charters since 2008: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47014 (see Figure 1 on page 21)

[ensignavenger]

Nah, real banks, but I did some looking and it seems they have state charters rather than national ones from the OCC. What the implications of that would be are rather unclear to me, other than that state banks are regulated by both the state and the FDIC, and national banks are regulated by the OCC.