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Tag: Alex Payne

  • Simple Unveils App for iPhone

    Simple, formerly known as BankSimple, a startup co-founded by former Twitter engineer Alex Payne, has just announced its new app for iPhone. The app is free for Simple account holders. Much like with Pinterest, users can go to Simple’s site and request an invite to open an account, though membership is presently limited. Below is a clip describing the new iPhone app:

    In developing its platform, Simple maintained a focus on:

    Here is a screen of the iPhone app:

    simple iphone app

    Parity

    Today, everyone expects their bank to have a mobile app. However, too many banking apps feel like an afterthought. We took a different approach and put the mobile app first. With the Simple mobile app you can view your Safe-to-Spend balance, search and browse your entire transaction history, pay bills, deposit checks, and get help from our customer relations team. No matter where you are, you’ll have all the same tools that are available on the Simple website.

    Immediacy

    Once you sign in to the Simple app, you won’t need to enter your username and password. You can always get to your financial information quickly and securely with your four-digit unlock code. Once you’re in the app, your Safe-to-Spend balance is readily available on every screen. If you want to see your balance in greater detail, just tap it to reveal your total balance, pending transactions, and upcoming payments.

    Efficiency

    We built our mobile app to support both quick financial decision-making and in-depth review. Glancing at your balance while standing in a checkout line should be effortless. Looking up a particular transaction should take no more than a few taps. A long train ride might be an opportunity to see what you’ve been spending money on lately.

    There has been a bit of hype around how the Simple platform could replace banking, and the company explains, “(Bank)Simple is doing something no bank has ever done: We’re designing our web and mobile experiences in tandem – Deposit checks by phone. Authorize transactions by phone to prevent fraud. Categorize spending on your phone as it happens. That’s just the beginning.” Simple operates in a partnership with the Bancorp Inc., and accounts are protected by the FDIC, and users can even garner interest. In order for a user to “leave their bank,” their money must be transfered over to their Simple account. Simple’s Lead Mobile Engineer Dustin Barker mentions that apps for iPad and Android are coming soon.

  • BankSimple Makes Mysterious “Key Hire”

    BankSimple Makes Mysterious “Key Hire”

    BankSimple, the startup that’s supposed to disrupt the banking industry, has apparently made an important hire that may or may not have a direct impact on whether that actually happens. 

    BankSimple was co-founded by Alex Payne, a former Twitter engineer, who was there from the beginning, and worked primarily on building Twitter’s developer platform and on the service’s core infrastructure. Think about how much of Twitter’s success has been based upon the developer ecosystem around it. "It was an education in scaling, optimization, and systems architecture, not to mention all the joys and stresses that come with working at a growing startup," says Payne of his time at Twitter.

    Today, Payne tweeted the following:

    Just made a key hire. Can’t wait to announce it, but it’ll have to wait.less than a minute ago via EchofonAlex Payne
    al3x

    BankSimple says it is designing "true mobile banking", and shouldn’t be confused with Square, another startup from a Twitter vet (co-founder Jack Dorsey) looking to disrupt the credit card industry. 

    "BankSimple is doing something no bank has ever done: We’re designing our web and mobile experiences in tandem," the company says. "Deposit checks by phone. Authorize transactions by phone to prevent fraud. Categorize spending on your phone as it happens. That’s just the beginning."

    "Part of Banksimple’s secret sauce is its predictive money management model," wrote Jennifer Van Grove, who interviewed Payne about the company last summer. "While users only need to concern themselves with a single account, there are actually checking, savings and credit accounts tied to that one login. Those will function behind-the-scenes with Banksimple automatically managing funds and transferring money between the accounts as needed."

    Based on the interview, it sounds like much of BankSimple’s success will depend on the developer community, not unlike Twitter. It’s a whole new ballgame when you’re talking about bank accounts, though, and Facebook/Twitter integration (which it is supposed to have) could be a little scary for some people. 

    BankSimple says its team is made up of people with backgrounds in a range from bank strategy to data science to software engineering, and has worked in financial services, information security, "top-tier" consulting firms, and successful startups. 

    Last week, the company announced a new customer relations team, which should be key in its quest to provide customers with a Zappos-like customer experience as described in the interview with Payne. 

    The product will be coming this year, according to BankSimple’s website, and they’re currently letting people sign up to be on their beta list.

  • Twitter to Get More Useful in Time for Monetization?

    Twitter engineer Alex Payne tweeted over the weekend, "If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)" Some took that to mean that Twitter was working on some new features for its own site, that would essentially render some popular third-party clients all but obsolete. The question is whether this is a legitimate concern for developers, or it has just been blown out of proportion. It could possibly be a combination of the two.

    Technology blog TechCrunch took the tweet and ran with it, speculating that Twitter "appears to be on the verge of some big changes," and noting that the company recently hired a new "UI guru" (that’s User Interface) from LinkedIn. Following this story, Payne quickly reacted through his Twitter account, downplaying the threat to third-party developers, saying things like, "I just mean that our web client team is building cool stuff. It’s going to inspire desktop app developers. Same data, new perspectives," and "It’s all stuff that’s available in the API, just a different view of it." He also retweeted more than one tweet mocking TechCrunch’s reaction, such as this one from another Twitter employee:

    Twitter mocks TechCrunch over new feature speculation?

    Still, TechCrunch’s MG Siegler may not be completely off base. Just because Twitter isn’t taking anything away from developers, doesn’t necessarily mean that users of certain third-party apps won’t just as soon use Twitter.com instead, when the features they enjoy start being integrated there. If nothing else, such features could keep new users from worrying about looking for apps that do these things, because their needs will already be filled.

    That’s not to say Twitter would be wrong for doing so. User retention has been a problem for the company in the past, and anything that makes Twitter more usable has to be good for usage. Twitter is expected to announce its new ad platform/monetization model this month (finally), and while nobody knows exactly how that’s going to shake out yet, it’s likely in Twitter’s best interest to have users going through Twitter itself.

    Twitter has not been shy in the past about taking ideas that were born from the community, and integrating them into Twitter.com (the retweet feature comes to mind). The much larger Facebook has certainly been happy to borrow ideas from Twitter, so if Twitter wants to secure a stable future in this social networking/microblogging space, it is going to help if it looks at the ways users use the service through third-party apps, and utilizes some of these functionalities on its own.

    As far as the developers are concerned, the more ideas Twitter takes for itself, the more innovating developers are going to have to do to keep their own apps relevant, and that can only be good for the Twitter community at large.

    On a sidenote, Payne’s original tweet on the matter appears to have been deleted (the URL linked to by Siegler, now goes to a "sorry that page doesn’t exist!" page).  Update: Twitter does apparently have some missing tweet issues going on, so perhaps that is related.