The majority of community financial institution provide more value (via rate give back) than national and regional banks and should be jumping at leveraging this as part of their campaigns to develop new relationships. A thread (of sorts)...thanks in advance for following along. https://twitter.com/Plaid/status/1354811402263752707

Where you place your paycheck used to hold more meaning -- as did where you banked -- given all of the choices we have today. Does it matter? Or can it? Why not put it in a community institution rather than a large bank? Why not a credit union with better rates than a fintech?

Or a fintech like an @Aspiration that focuses on physically *where* their funds are invested in a similar way credit decisions work inside a local FI? We vote with our wallet every day, whether we think of it that way or not - this reflects not only our values but our principles.

Efforts like this by Plaid can do a few things. Enable more innovation around the value of funds storage (maybe) or create opportunities for longer term relationships that are a true value exchange (hmmm, interesting). And much more.

Plaid showing us that recycled ideas that never really took off because of technical challenges are a business model in itself. Switch kits (and even automated ones) have been around for a long while. They were once on paper. I used them at HIs over the years. And they worked.

They have been part of several digital onboarding and even some PFM aggregators offerings (I think there were also several companies whose entire business was this one function if I recall correctly). Old ideas are new again, example 24532. FinTech FTW.

If I were a fintech data aggregator, I would be watching this with interest, because switching credit balances via an API is already at the core of what many startups are building (or have launched already). Plaid just gets the press, but there are many partners to skin this cat.

As I've said many times before, the financial services revolution may not be televised, but it will be driven by APIs...and this is just yet another example of that. But...so you moved deposits to another FI or wherever. It's way more than that.

Building a better relationship than the last requires trust -- genuine truth and communication. We don't lie our way from the last to the next without someone getting hurt in the process. How can we make something last that isn't on the basis of real connection at its heart?

Building better financial services means separating the utility of banking from the value of banking and delivering that anywhere...imagine the balance sheet of millions of consumers in a different place than on the ledger of a bank and you get the idea. Deposit insurance? Meh.

Most people don't hold deposits long enough in a current account to care about deposit insurance or interest rate, but if you can provide an insured place for longer term savings, a place to hold investment funds, and a marketplace to flip credit balance to better terms...

Case in point. Just got this from chase today. Forget Buy Now, Pay Later, you need to be helping customers reduce the cost of ANY credit balance they have with a single click. This includes mortgages (even refinancing with an existing provider). Because the alternative....

Well, the alternative is just extractive capitalism, and the worst part of the banking business model is the extraction of profit based on a low cost of funds matching low consumer inertia and imperfect information. Rates change and improve financial conditions for our customers.

We shouldn't be happy if we see banks with 20, 30, 40% margins in the good years -- what value does the consumer get when profits are so significant and rates are so low? When there is no imagination to provide real value in exchange? Consumers are not a balance sheet item.

We are starting to really see the impact of the industry's tenuous relationship with its customers, after decades of neglect by the biggest banks. Think we've seen a lot of pressure on profit margins over the past decade? The next stage will make your head spin.

Tying together fintech applications in an open, interoperable
and tangible marketplace where value and utility can work together will be the starting point of the next iteration of the business model. Can banks be involved? Certainly. Will fintechs and large techs drive this?

Absolutely they will. What's interesting isn't the news of the week, the recent fundings, the rise and fall of Gamestop etc, what's really interesting is watching consumer behavior shift this past decade. If I still inside a financial institution, I would be partnering like mad.

Big or small, there is room for so much more in this space. To create significant value for the customers we are fortunate to serve. Deliver a better deal, make an impact on their financial lives. They are not users, they are human beings with needs, and legacies to fulfill.

'Banking' is not an industry, it is part of the flow of value between humans across generations. Money itself is an illusion, and yet many spend their lives to accumulate it without looking around to others in their community with greater needs than their own. That has to change.

So many in the industry think more broadly than today, and work to simply #makebankingbetter -- what we do in life echoes in eternity they say. How is your legacy doing? How are you creating an API to improve lives rather than just extracting profit from them to you and VCs?

The founders I've worked with get that. Companies like @BondDotAi @stoovo @CuneXus and others. They think broadly and deeply, and personally about what is relevant to the value they create for people they impact. It's not an ends to a means, it's a passion rooted in compassion.

We've written about this every week, and more specifically in what is coming out in a few weeks in the book (yes, yes I know...product placement...but I really want people to read it and give what they do every single day a think -- because our purpose goes way beyond today).

And the purpose of financial services, fintech, tech -- hell, even this GameStop madness -- there is a broader point to all of it and we all have to find that for ourselves. Here is a link to what I'm talking about, this thing we wrote https://www.koganpage.com/product/beyond-good-9781789667295

I remain bolstered by the people I talk to everyday. The conversations about making what we do mean more for you personally, mean more for your community, mean more than just today. We are not here forever, but the collective mark we make does indeed have lasting meaning.

If you're in financial services or fintech, you have a responsibility to build as a fiduciary. Financial lives and legacies are at stake more than we think about on a daily basis. Life is more than 1s and 0s, more than metrics, more precious than profit. Let's act accordingly.//