BankSimple Takes Another Giant Step Where No Bank Has Gone Before

Yesterday, BankSimple, the eagerly anticipated, socially conscious to-be-started bank, released the tool it is using to develop its application programming interface, known as API.

What this means is that not only will BankSimple offer an API, which allows other developers to build applications on top of whatever web service BankSimple offers, but BankSimple is actually allowing everyone and anyone to build the tool that can be used to build the applications.

This is as far as I know radically unprecedented in banking. I can recall some specific applications that allowed for such “social coding,” as it is called. But I cannot recollect a bank – or eventual bank, in this case – incorporating social coding on such a level. To me, this is a real sign on the part of BankSimple of not just radical foresight. BankSimple understands that it will only be as good – and as successful – as the people who use it. What better way to insure that the bank is used to maximum benefit than to effectively allow consumers to build its IT infrastructure?