Background on project:

Simple replaces your bank with everything you need to organize your spending and save more.  Your funds live in FDIC-insured accounts with our partner bank, The Bancorp Bank, and we provide everything else. Through Simple, you can make purchases with your Simple Visa® Card, deposit checks using your smartphone, set up direct deposit, earn interest, pay bills, save and budget painlessly, withdraw cash from over 50,000 ATMs, and more. We offer beautifully-designed web interface and iPhone and Android apps, no surprise fees, and real customer service.

  

Headers (possible options):

• Banking built to help
• Banking can be fun.  Don’t believe us?  Try replacing your bank with Simple.
• Banking that helps instead of harms.
• Saving doesn’t have to be hard
• Trouble saving?  Replace your bank with Simple and we can help.

 

Call to Action (possible options):

• Replace your Bank
• Start being delighted

 

Benefits:

• Tools to organize your spending and save more
  • Stop worrying about saving and actually start doing it.
  • Understand and organize your spending so that you can save more.
  • Know what’s Safe-to-Spend today while still saving for tomorrow.
• Mobile / Accessibility
  • Using our mobile apps, you’ll have banking services available wherever and whenever you want them.  No more worrying about where the nearest branch is or when it will be open.
• Personal, amazing customer service
  • Our customer service team provides positive experiences that will brighten your day and personal service when things go wrong with no minimum balance required.
• No hidden fees or overdraft charges
• • We think your money belongs to you and our job is to help you manage it, not invent fees to take it from you.

 Our customer service team provides positive experiences that will brighten your day and personal service when things go wrong with no minimum balance required.

Credibility (still under development):

• “Think of Simple as a hybrid of Mint and your existing bank but with only the good stuff, like goal oriented spending and depositing checks with your smartphone.” - Gizmodo

 

Social Proof / Testimonials (still working to finalize testimonials, but this is the flavor of them that I was thinking about):

• @mattjcline: @Simplify Goals are so awesome. I'm a fool at saving and it makes saving fool-proof.
• @RonaldLewis: With @Simplify, you forget you’re saving. It just happens. Your life is more balanced. Automatic. Money is working for you. Not against.
• @sophiagurule: I take my banking experience for granted until I don’t. Thanks for making life more simple, @Simplify.
• @AndyRoy: @Simplify has changed the way I spend and save. And it has raised my expectations for customer service everywhere else! So happy!
• “Thank you for the accomplishment your Goals feature has allowed me to achieve. To most, this is something simple for them to do, but I have always had issues with managing/saving money and as of today, my 31st day with Simple, I have saved $436 in Goals, something I haven't been able to do before and something that takes a lot of discipline to do. I thank you for a wonderful team, system, and support. " - Jerrod

Note: My feeling here is that the testimonials might actually be more powerful if they feel like they’re coming from someone “just like you” instead of someone with particularly high “credibility” but lower relatability.

 

Risk Reversal:

• We built what we wanted in a bank, we think you’ll like it too
• Join us in replacing your bank with Simple
• We’re banking with Simple too.

Note: While we can’t provide a financial guarantee, I’m wondering if an emotional appeal based on the idea that Simple’s employees are also its customers would be the best approach to take?

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions:

Who can use Simple?

To be eligible, you must:

• Be a resident of the United States;
• Be over the age of 18;
• Have a Social Security number; and
• Own an iOS device with iOS 5.0 or higher, or an Android phone running Android OS 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) or higher.

 

What is Simple? Are you a bank?

Simple is not a bank. Simple replaces your bank with everything you need to spend smarter and save more. Your funds live in FDIC-insured accounts with our partner bank, The Bancorp Bank, and we provide everything else. Through Simple, you can make purchases with your Simple Visa® Card, deposit checks using your smartphone, set up direct deposit, earn interest, pay bills, save and budget painlessly, withdraw cash from over 50,000 ATMs, and more. We offer beautifully-designed web interface and iPhone and Android apps, no surprise fees, and real customer service.

We take care of you, the bank takes care of your money, and jointly, we’ve designed a better financial experience.

Simple is built by Simple Finance Technology Corp.

 

What about fees?

Simple does not profit from fees. We believe that sort of business model creates an adversarial relationship between banks and their customers, since the bank benefits when customers make mistakes. That’s not right. We’re adamant about minimizing fees and never penalizing our customers.

This means:

• No hidden fees, no monthly debit card fees, account maintenance fees, low balance fees, overdraft fees, or anything of that sort; and
• No fees for domestic funds transfers, or for using a domestic out-of-network ATM (although the out-of-network ATM owner may charge a fee).

Though the fees are very few and far between, we’re not entirely fee-free. After 180 days (6 months) of inactivity, we charge a $5 monthly fee to avoid escheatment, which is when the government attempts to reclaim "unused" bank accounts. But don't worry: we want to avoid that as much as you do, and we'll warn you before it happens! The only other time you might ever incur charges from Simple is when the service you request is too expensive for us to cover (e.g. international wire transfers). In these cases, we only charge you what the service costs to provide. For details, see our Schedule of Fees.

 

Are my deposits insured by the FDIC?

Yes. All deposits are made with our partner bank and insured to at least the FDIC limit (currently $250,000). FDIC insurance guarantees the safety of your deposits.

 

How’s the ATM access?

We partner with the country’s largest fee-free ATM network, Allpoint®, with over 50,000 locations nationwide. That’s roughly twice the number of the nation’s largest bank. You’ll be able to locate ATMs within our mobile app, and wherever you are there should be no shortage of fee-free ATMs available. You can also request cash back at thousands of merchants when you use your Simple Card.

A note about international ATMs: international ATMs cost Simple two to three times as much as domestic ATMs. So, there will be a small fee for international ATM use, but we only charge you what it costs us–we never mark up fees.