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Setting The Record Straight: Digital-first Banking Taxonomy

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When it comes to digital banking, a lot of terms get tossed about and used interchangeably without being conscious of the technical intricacies behind them. Digital banks, neobanks, challenger banks, digital subsidiaries, embedded banks, over-the-top banks – the list goes on.While there’s a fair bit of overlap among these terms and the overarching identity they assume as “digital banks,” the fun part is understanding the nuances of what defines and sets these terms apart. With this blog, we put on the hat of the digital banking definitions police and try to set the record straight on the types of digital banks out there and what makes them different.Defenders versus AttackersLike every good action/thriller movie, there has to be a big bad scary problem the protagonists are trying to defeat (read solve, in this scenario). Here, the main problem is traditional banking, which is bogged down by a hundred different pain points that we don’t really need to list down at this point. You get the gist.Enter the champions of the story – the attackers and the defenders. The attackers, a new-gen we-are-the-revolution mindset bunch, are the young blood of the banking generation trying to do things their way, i.e., reimagining […]

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