Have you ever thought about what it really takes for you to complete making a purchase? To send some cash from your bank account to one of your friends?
Me neither… It’s boring.
What I have thought about –
- Who the hell uses cheques at this point in life?
- Why does it have to be stupid unfriendly and difficult?
- Why do I have to pay for that service?
Banks charge fees for having accounts, they take profit based on the spread of how very little interest they give customers for savings accounts and the amount of interest they earn from lending, they charge overdraft and credit card fees.
With all that I am paying the bank, both knowingly and also unknowingly… Why is it that I have to pay $50 for a cheque book? And buy 50 of them when I might have had the need for a cheque once in the past 3 years. Why is it that I have to pay $1 to send my friend an e-transfer who also has an account at BMO? Even at other banks… is it not electronic and automated?
The Future … None Of That Crap
Payments and transfers are evolving. It’s not coming from your bank thinking of great ways to make your life easier. It’s coming from companies like Facebook, Apple, Google, from start up companies, and other individuals focused on forward thinking.
I recently spoke with Co-Founder and CEO of Payso, Jake Tyler. They run a peer-to-peer payment platform that helps with money transfer. You sending money to your friend Joe for beers he paid for last night. As he put it, organizing trips from his previous experience around the UK and dealing with a bunch of expenses and gathering that money.
If you want to buy a cow in Kenya, not only can you text the money to the individual you are buying it from, but you can borrow the money needed and apply for that loan immediately from the same cell phone with unbelievably low transaction costs.
If they can do this in Kenya, why can we not do this in Canada?
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