A year after opening its virtual doors to the public, American digital banking platform Simple says it has 40,000 customers and is processing more than $1 billion in transactions annually.
Last July, three years after founder Josh Reich first pitched the idea, Simple began bringing on-board the 125,000 Americans on its waiting list. A year on, the number of invite requests has doubled to 250,000 but, so far, only 40,000 have actually become customers.
Those customers are carrying out more $1 billion in transactions per year and have swiped their old-fashioned mag-stripe Visa cards more than two million times. They are also using the Simple Goals service to save nearly $100 million.
Reich decided to build Simple to take advantage of public disillusionment with financial services firms in the wake of the 2008 crisis, promising to provide better, simpler services.
The platform is not a bank; it works with chartered banks that hold deposits in FDIC-insured products, leaving it to concentrate on the front end, proving customers with easy-to-use, cutting edge Web and mobile services.
Says Reich in a blog post: "We started this business with the idea that we could make money by providing an honest service that helped people spend smarter and save more, free from of the pitfalls that are typical for our industry. We believed that, by focusing on a great product and great service, we could build a business that not only does good, but also does well."