That exactly. Fintech forced Financial Institutions into Digital Transformation. Now they have caught up, there is no "next big thing" for Fintech. Crypto might have been it, but it killed itself by terrible UI and a never ending stream of scams and frauds. I believe there is an AI Agent Internet of Money to end Ad Revenue, but haven't found the arbitrage model yet.

Halifax is owned by Lloyds banking group, and their current app is just the exact same Lloyds app with a different logo. I know because I bank with both and the apps are identical.

Previous to the merging of online services, you are correct that Halifax had its own app and it was terrible. But at that time Lloyds had a great app, they just hadnt unified the back end tech of all the different bank brands they own.

It wasnt disruption from startups that caused the improvement, it was the parent company taking its time to merge the decent tech it had developed for itself.

Yeah I feel like Monzo and Starling really forced the high street banks to level up their game. A friend of mine was a PM on an app at one of the big high street banks and they said the instruction from the top was explicitly to be like Monzo, and they did iterate, get better at app development, and ship a bunch of features that people like (spending notifications, in app card freezing, etc).

Interesting... We've had scanned check deposits at Chase (US) for at least 15 years, I think.

Bear in mind that's a measure of how backwards US banking is, not how advanced.

In the UK, I can't remember the last time I wrote or received a cheque. Maybe twice in the 17 years I've been living here, and certainly not in the last decade.

So with UK cheque usage being a tiny fraction of the US rate, there's simply no demand for it in banking apps.

Cheque use in the UK is now around two per year per person. (This includes business-to-business cheques.)

The over-65 age group is most likely to use them, and least likely to use an app, so you can see why it wasn't a big priority for most banks.

It's been at least 15 years since the banks stopped giving account holders chequebooks by default. If you want one you have to ask.

I get a couple of cheques a year from family in the UK. It's an infrequent transaction but an important one, and cheque scanning is actually the only reason I maintain my legacy bank account.

ppl dowvoting facts now