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Comment by jlg23 | Hacker News Reader

Or, in the case of international money transfer: They see through the existing system and just openly do what most banks have been doing all the time behind the scenes, passing most of the savings to the customer.

The only problem I see with this specific business model: As soon as enough people use it, this method of transfer will be the norm and all the big banks will offer it too, thereby invalidating the justification for the existence of the new players. (Mind you, still a great win for the customer!)

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>The only problem I see with this specific business model: As soon as enough people use it, this method of transfer will be the norm and all the big banks will offer it too, thereby invalidating the justification for the existence of the new players.

Yes exactly what I was thinking. But by that time Transferwise could be a reputable brand with lots of customers so they could pivot to offer other financial services.

And almost certainly better tech.

You ever check out the OS your bank is running?

Honestly, I don't care whether I am driven over by a Porsche Cayenne or a Willys MB.

And while I have not worked in the banking sector myself, lots of my friends did - and it was not cobol. They are catching up and they all know that their mainframe sw is dated and act upon it.

I don't think the "quality" of the tech is of any relevance here.

EDIT: Well, I actually know some guys who bit the bullet and learned cobol when they were just turning 20. By the time they turned 30, they did not have to work anymore.

> and it was not cobol

And if it was, personally, I wouldn't have a problem as a customer.

It's cobol.

I'd have 100% more trust in a system written in COBOL than node.js.

But it is currently maintained by the new nodejs devs who figured maintaining COBOL pays greater.

> You ever check out the OS your bank is running?

Does it matter? I don't care what Fidelity, Vanguard, etc run under the hood, I have no loyalty nor switching costs.

Vanguard's interface is garbage, plain and simple, but they have the lowest cost index funds; I'd use paper and pen to correspond with them if necessary. I moved from Betterment, who has a very delightful iOS app and web interface, because the fees were lower at Vanguard.

Ideally this is solved by positioning. Since they are associated with this concept it should be hard to copy as long as they executed it well, even if (or especially if) it's copied by a huge traditional banking brand (e.g. a British bank). At the very least they should be positioned well for a buyout (as that's likely the best way of going about it by a traditional bank).

I don't think it's possible without significant restructuring (for banks). They have huge costs that TransferWise is avoiding.

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