One of the biggest misconceptions of the past decade is that neobanks fundamentally reinvented banking.
I increasingly think they mostly reinvented distribution.
The customer experience improved dramatically. Interfaces became cleaner and more intuitive than what most incumbent banks had offered for years, but underneath the interface, the operational model remained surprisingly familiar.
Most neobanks still rely heavily on interchange fees, FX spreads, subscriptions, and increasingly conventional lending products. Customers still manually manage liquidity, move money between accounts, decide when to save, borrow, or invest, and coordinate financial activity themselves. In many cases, the bank simply became easier to use.
That era is coming to an end, and I think the next phase of banking will be defined less by interface quality and more by execution itself.
