the startupist

You may remember my overall negative pre-impression of Movenbank, the self proclaimed next generation bank that is looking to create a revolutionary new bank with no paper, no plastic, and no hidden fees.  Well, the startup debuted in alpha mode at the beginning of the month.  I received my alpha invite two days ago.  Here’s an inside look at phase 1.

It all started with a series of 40 questions designed to gauge my personal spending habits, saving habits, and my overall views on money and personal financial management.  The questions are fairly repetitive, with at least 5 of them asking me in one way or another how I view/react to impulse purchases.

It all ended with the results of the survey.  Based on the answers given to the 40 questions, Movenbank groups their users into 1 of 9 classes.  I spend quite a bit of time and energy analyzing my money and allocating it, which is obviously reflected in my classification as an “Accountant” in the table below.

Also, I received a badge!  Gamified banks are fun!

That’s about as far as the alpha goes at this point.  Take a survey, and they tell you what your “financial personality” is.  Cool.  I couldn’t help but ask myself what was next.  Luckily, Movenbank anticipated that question, and had an answer ready.

So, before we get to get all Bank 3.0 up this this interweb, it looks like we’ll have some sort of Mint with game mechanics.  Admittedly, I don’t have high hopes or opinions about Movenbank at this point.  I will reiterate, as I said in the previous Movenbank post, that I want them to prove me wrong.  I love banking, and am excited to see what they put out - whether or not I think it will ultimately be successful.

You know those startups that are going to be a super-huge success because they have a location-based-photo-sharing-social-group-deals-with-private-sales-and-game-mechanics? Yeah. It’s kind of like that.

Betabeat reported on Movenbank, a start that may, in the near future, use your Klout score and other aggregated online social data to issue you a credit line. The “bank”, founded by Brett King, seems to be a logical next step following his success with the book Bank 2.0. I should note that King, an accomplished figure in the world of finance, is brilliant and has a fairly accurate picture of how banking has changed and intriguing ideas as to what it might look like in the future (read: he is 100x smarter than I am when it comes to that stuff). However, there are a few things I find concerning about Movenbank, not the least of which is access to a credit line based on Klout, but more about that later.

The core purpose of Movenbank is to be a “third generation banking experience” with “no paper, no plastic, and no hidden fees”. Ambitious for sure, but it the premise seems reasonable enough. Then, King starts talking about what is coming up in their alpha. Initially, the startup will have no real banking features. Rather, it is described as being a “foursquare/Klout for your financial life”

-Pause. What the what? So we can check in with our money and get badges? Or, we get a Klout-style score based on our buying history? Or we can share our purchases (look how that worked out for Blippy/Swipely…) Or, maybe it’s Mint.com gone Facebook. No description of the company, from other tech sources or from the founder himself, has made any real sense. End Pause.

Now, let’s talk about this Klout stuff. Klout is a supposed measure of social influence based on activity/data on social networks and applications. It is complete nonsense. How do I know? Klout claims that I am influential about New Jersey, Coffee, and iPads. I live in the Dirty Jerz and occasionally will tweet my current location in NJ when I go out on work related visits. Other than knowing the NJ Turnpike extremely well, I know really nothing about the rest of the fine state. I have tweeted about coffee before. I like to drink it. But to say I’m influential about it is hilarious. It seems that some who is influential about the drink would be able to describe the roasting process, etc. I cannot. I can only tell you that I think it tastes good. And now, iPads… Somehow I am influential about iPads, yet I do not even own one, so… Klout is a joke. Now, let’s assume that King is completely serious about using online social profile data to determine a Movenbank user’s influences which will essentially determine their ability access a line of credit. At least with Klout, the only real thing at stake is access to free samples from Axe. To stake tangible dollars on what seems to be a relatively easily manipulable algorithm is not something I would characterize as “good business sense”.

At this point, I should reiterate that King is a very smart man with a great deal of knowledge about finance and banking. I could be very wrong about everything here. In fact, I hope I am. I hope I look like a fool when Movenbank launches, but thus far the joke seems to be on Movenbank. None if this adds up.

Once we get past the neo-socio-influential layer, we move into the actual financial guts of the Movenbank platform - the paperless, plasticless, hidden fee-less guts. Movenbank plans to utilize near field communication (NFC), presumable via mobile phones, to facilitate transactions. The recent release of Google Wallet certainly has transactions via NFC on every geek’s mind, but it seems that the general public could really care less at this point. NFC faces a massive educational curve and concerns about security from the public. A recent TechCrunch piece reports that PayPal believes NFC to be years away from serious consumer adoption, and I am inclined to agree. It looks like Movenbank is trying to go all Jetsons when all the world is really asking for is Flinstones 2.0 (i.e. BankSimple).

At this point, I should reiterate that King is a very smart man with a great deal of knowledge about finance and banking. I could be very wrong about everything here. In fact, I hope I am. I hope I look like a fool when Movenbank launches, but thus far the joke seems to be on Movenbank. Nothing about Movenbank makes sense to me. None of it.

I did sign up for an invite. We’ll see what it’s all about when I make it to the inside.