Perhaps banks seem to you like conservative organizations, unwilling to change quickly, also overly cautious since they work mostly with other people's money. You are not far from the truth in terms of awareness, but know that the banks are currently under siege. Attacks come from the Internet, but not primarily from hackers, but from completely legal companies that are eating into their sandwich faster and faster.
At the beginning of the 2000s, telecoms were the target of computer scientists. Computer scientists realized that voice could be digitized, streamed for free over the Internet, and converted back into audio at the other end, at virtually no cost. As a file attached to an email. If he can do it for free, then anything is possible, they thought. For a while, telecoms tried to resist (Serbian for the longest time), but they had to give in and now everyone can make phone calls over the Internet, and even connect landlines around the world. Admittedly, there are requests from telecoms to limit Internet communication that resembles phone calls, but that is only in the realm of wishes, for now.
Then computer scientists realized that the same could be done with money. The one who pays is on one side, the one who is paid on the other side, and between them is mostly the internet. It's just that the transaction is done through the bank, which charges a nice fee. So they came up with the idea of creating services that will do that work for a cent where the bank asks you for a dollar. They couldn't do big things like big loans, of course, but small loans, micropayments, money transfers, all of that when put in a pile is one big piece of the banking pie.
Banks reacted differently than telecoms. They realized that they had to change because the tightening of regulations (which the telecoms were asking for) would cause them even bigger problems. That's how we got to the point where building financial startups is currently the most exciting job for young developers.
One such project has been winning startup competitions in recent months. It is the Israeli PayKey (PayKey). Their app connects your phone to your bank account and adds a new button to your keyboard. When you communicate on one of the popular services (Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber, etc.) and your friend reminds you that you owe him money or you want to send it to him for some reason, it is enough to click a button in the middle of the conversation, the application connects your account with the account of your of a friend (if he uses Pejki), enter the amount, click on the mentioned button, and the money is gone. Very simple, you don't exit the application, as if you took cash out of your wallet and gave it to him. The application is still in the research phase, but the interest is high.
Another interesting application was made by the Croatian neighbors. It's Mikroblink, an application that scans documents and bills when you point your phone's camera at them. It is known that you cannot do many transactions with the bank online because you need an ID card and a stamp. If the laws were slightly rearranged, this app would solve that issue. The person who provides you with a service could quickly and easily agree with the bank on the recognition of your personal document, and the same applies to the stamp. Once authenticity is established, the client no longer needs to walk around unnecessarily. In addition to the ID card, the application can also recognize bills and create an online version for payment.
Banks may soon become more like apps, before the damage becomes irreparable. The wheel of change cannot be stopped, say bankers, telling telecoms and others that you cannot face the challenges of the Internet from the trenches.
