Brett King, best-selling author of BANK 2.0 and BANK 3.0, renowned public speaker and advisor to some of the world’s biggest financial services organizations and leading brands, opined that millions of consumers soon won’t need a bank account.  Why?  Debit Cards and Gift Cards, Western Union Account, Cash, PayPal Account, Prepaid Telephone Account, Apple Store Account, Starbucks Card, etc are replacing cash:

Apple has 400m account holders holding an Apple Store or iTunes account, that’s more than the top 3 banks in the world have in retail banking customers.

Starbucks, which processes more than 2m transactions every week in the US, took in deposits of $3 Billion on their in-store App-based debit or gift card this year. That puts them ahead of the 6,985 smaller institutions in the US who on average did around $185m in deposits in 2011, and the 440 midsize institutions who averaged $2.6Bn in deposits. Imagine that! A coffee company that is better at taking deposits than 95% of the FDIC insured banks in the US, and they don’t even have a banking license.

The same is true for M-Pesa in Kenya who has recently started offering interest on savings and micro-lending facilities. M-Pesa grew to 17m customers in just 6 years, almost 50% of the Kenyan population. They do enough money through their mobile-based simple “current account” to represent 25% of Kenya’s GDP. The banks in Kenya can’t even come close to this type of financial inclusion for the unbanked.

Further more, P2P Lenders, Payday Lenders, Retailer Layway/Laybuy and Store Card Schemes etc  are replacing banks in providing loans.

More details from Brett’s blog here.

Contact us at Speakers Connect at info@speakersconnect.com or +852 21654126 if you would like to engage Brett for your next event, or viist us for more top-notch International Speakers from us.