Preface
Bank 2.0 was written in 2009 when mobile had just started to become a significant part of retail banking, and just after the internet had surpassed all other banking channels for day-to-day access. Bitcoin had just launched. Betterment, Simple and Moven were yet to be announced, in fact, FinTech overall was not yet even a term for most of us. Bank 2.0 was a simple exploration of the fact that customer behaviour was rapidly evolving as a result of technology, and this was creating an imperative for change within banking, which was undeniable.
By 2012 mobile was the next big thing. It was on track to surpass internet, and there was no longer an argument about whether or not banks should have a mobile application. The importance of day-to-day use of technology to access banking was clear, but most banks were still in the evolutionary mode, where mobile was considered simply a subset of internet banking and the technology team were still begging the executive floor for adequate funding. That was by no means an easy battle. Bank 3.0 was the further realisation that you could be a bank based exclusively on emerging technology. As I wrote in Bank 3.0: “Banking is no longer somewhere you go, but something you do.” Banking was moving out of the physical realm into the digital.
That was more than six years ago. That’s a long time between drinks, as we say in Australia. The reason for the delay in me writing a Bank 4.0 vision was simple—the future of where banking would go after ...