[mattquiros]

I've been exploring the idea of starting up a bank. The big banks here in my country are so inefficient and I'm hoping to simply make a better banking experience for consumers, hopefully via their mobile phones. Can somebody shed some light on a few questions I have?

#1: I have absolutely no business background. Do I need to get an MBA in order to understand how banks work from the back-office, and maybe the legalities? Reading this article, the Simple co-founder apparently had an MBA. I'm a programmer by trade (Java, Android/iOS, a little of web).

#2: Should I consider Simple a competitor or should I think of banking as a very local kind of industry, like e-commerce? I don't want to build just another Simple clone, and considering Simple's success, if they scale up here in southeast Asia, I don't want to be just a copycat.

[Q6T46nT668w6i3m]

You should. The market could benefit from new participants.

1. You don’t need an MBA to understand banking. While the importance of regulation and compliance (“legalities”) is paramount, it isn’t something you learn from an MBA program.

2. It depends. Simple isn’t a bank. If you were successfully issued a charter, you could likely surpass Simple, et al. from an innovation and feature perspective. FYI: http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/banking_12779.htm

[biswajitsharma]

Q1: MBA - I guess no :). But it will be good to have very strong hold on how financial system in your country works. Q2: Scaling a Bank is not easy (but ofcourse possible). Reason is Regulations of each country is different. That is true with any Financial Service. People say PayPal is global, yes they are but they have to adhere to local rules.

[cstejerean]

Banking is definitely a very local industry, because the regulations vary widely by country.