“Invisible banking” is pointless

We love to throw phrases around to try to ground the next generation of banking. I was lucky enough to coin the phrase “digital bank” and “banking-as-a-service” years ago, and have now moved on to “intelligent bank” (coming out soon). For those who read my blog regularly, you will know that I see this as the third revolution of tech in banking, payments and finance:

Revolution #1: automating the mundane with mainframes – rewiring the back office

Revolution #2: giving the customer control with cloud – rewiring the front office

Revolution #3: making every moment matter through AI – rewiring the whole office

The bit that gets confusing is what to call the third revolution. I call it the intelligence revolution but see many others talking about embedded and invisible banking. The problem with this is that banking should not be invisible. Money is important – as I often blog it is our second most important priority in life – so why would you want it to be invisible. It’s the wrong word.

Now, I know what is meant is that it should be convenient, easy and smooth to use. Cool. But it should not be invisible.

Then let’s get on to the word embedded. That’s a good word. You can embed payments and banking in everything these days and make it invisible. But, yet again, what we really mean is that you can embed it, make it invisible and convenient, easy and smooth to use.

That is the point. Banking, payments, money and finance becomes convenient, easy and smooth to use … but it must be intelligent. And that is the point that the embedded and invisible proponents miss and forget.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for embedded and invisible money. So, what’s my beef? My beef is that I want to know what’s going on with my money. My beef is that I have a lot of money disappearing from my accounts, due to embedded and invisible money. I have subscriptions I don’t use; regular payments to firms I no longer deal with; sudden money movements to companies I don’t know; and more.

There are two things in play here. First, are the subscriptions still relevant? Second, can you tell me exactly what that payment there si about?

On the first point, it’s simple. Give me a WhatsApp alert or a message in my Meta RayBan glasses saying a subscription is about to renew: yes or no. On the second, enrich every transaction with full information that is meaningful.

How often have I blogged that you’ve just paid A for B and I’ve no idea what’s going on. The truncated messaging on my bank statement is so dumb. $4,000 to “ABC1000202” on 1st April 2026. WTAF?

It is unbelievable that in this age of Artemis II circling the moon that we still cannot produce bank or payment apps that show intelligence about the movement of money.

The critical point here is that I don’t want to know that I paid through PayPal, Stripe or whoever. I want to know what the payment was for and who the end receiver was.

In other words, I’m really happy that making a payment is easy, convenient and smooth through invisible and embedded finance, but what I’m not happy about is how this reported on my account. I want to have intelligent finance where I can easily click or swipe on any transaction and find out exactly how the money moved from my account and where it went, not just the intermediary – Stripe or whoever – but the end-point.

I want the whole transaction trail to be easily visible, not just a small window that makes no sense.