BBVA buys NeoBank, BBVA closes NeoBank

interesting news from BBVA who in 2014 made news by purchasing NeoBank Simple. Now they’re shutting it down. About a one minute read, an excellent retrospective Twitter feed by a founder, and two other Twitter feeds of mixed emotions.

Comment: this isn’t really surprising, as I’ve mentioned before my bank is integrating many features — e.g., real time notifications of funds transfers in or out, spending limits, balance sweeps — previously only available from NeoBanks. So the distinction between incumbents and upstarts is increasingly blurred. How soon until NeoBanks are a quaint memory? Given the speed of feature adoption and functional changes by incumbents is accelerating, I’d say real soon now.

Excellent Twitter thread by a founder of Simple

1/10: One of the things I am proudest of was how @i2pi and I handled the Simple sale to BBVA. Out of the $117M sticker price, $14.6M in cash was paid out to 100 employees excluding founders.

— Shamir Karkal (@shamir_k) January 8, 2021

and some strong opinions

Are you fucking serious?! @BBVA_USA is closing @simple 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ no other bank offers the same budgeting automation features. Horrible horrible news! No, I don’t want to bank with BBVA. pic.twitter.com/tfJau4jmvV

— Mark (@mtor82) January 7, 2021

Wow, BBVA just killed @Simple.

Big yikes. pic.twitter.com/C4YgOfrFPH

— Nick Abouzeid (@nickabouzeid) January 7, 2021