GoBank is a cautious financial institution.
The mobile-first bank account from prepaid card veteran Green Dot has been conservative about introducing new features, but recently hinted new features will be coming this summer.
The hints came in an Instagram post earlier this week that was deleted yesterday. In response to a user’s request for a Windows version of GoBank — it is currently available for iOS and Android devices — a GoBank representative wrote that “lots” of new features were in the works for the summer and to stay tuned. (A Windows version did not seem to be one of them.)
It is not clear why the post was deleted. Bank Innovation reached out to GoBank for comment and will update this post if necessary.
This is significant because GoBank, which launched for beta users in January 2013 and opened to all users in June 2013, has made few changes to its functionality since inception. The company has updated its look and feel for iOS 7 and launched marketing initiatives targeting college campuses and viewers of “Project Runway,” but the feature set has remained static.
Those features are:
- Slide for Balance;
- Fortune Teller, which gives advice on purchases;
- Build a Budget, a limited PFM and budgeting tool; and
- MoneyVault, a place to set money aside away from the main flow of the transaction account.
The account also features bill pay and remote deposit capture functions.
Given the bank’s target audience of millennials, and given that millennials seem to be fond of PFM and budgeting help, it would be logical if the bank strengthened those features. The near-bank Moven features instant feedback on purchases and mobile payment functionality that will only increase if the iPhone 6 incorporates NFC. It seems unlikely GoBank, given its conservatism, will make a strong step in that direction.
Green Dot is a conservative company for good reason — its prepaid cards, particularly the MoneyPak product used to reload the cards, have been involved in high-profile fraud cases. Perhaps for that reason, GoBank has one of the most stringent policies for delivering funds deposited via RDC — the bank reserves the right to hold checks up to ten days, though it has said most checks are cleared considerably faster.
Benjamin Sinclair, in an analysis of Green Dot (ticker: GDOT), said of GoBank, “The service is still in its infancy, but early results are promising.” In the software world, a one-year-old service is no longer an infant. Competitors such as Bluebird and Moven, both of which launched around the same time as GoBank, have introduced new features while GoBank has not.
Being slow and watchful is helpful for avoiding compliance difficulties, but today’s customers are used to frequent updates and may not be willing to wait ten days for a check — or a year for new features.
Green Dot Bank, GoBank’s parent company, holds assets totalling about $480 million, according to the FDIC.