Out of curiosity, I just looked it up. Ubank is evidently a virtual bank. There are no actual brick-and-mortar locations. All transactions are done over the internet or by phone.
I guess I’m old-fashioned, but I’d never consider banking that way. I want to be able to talk face-to-face with a bank officer if I need to.
But on the plus side Ubank‘s deposits are guaranteed by the Australian government. So there’s that.
Most decent on-line banks:
—Have maximum withdrawals per transaction, per day, per week etc—all well below 500K.
—Use a second method of authentication before processing any transactions (call you, message you, email you)
I must be old-fashioned, too. I read that virtual banks offer higher interest rates for savings accounts, but I wouldn’t risk opening an account with them. I want to speak with a banker in person. We all know how phone lines for other businesses work these days: If the business doesn’t force you to “chat” online, its toll-free number forces you to talk with a machine or sit on hold for an hour, only to speak with someone who gives you misinformation or disconnects you.
That would be nice but most banks have gone virtual. Our bank started closing up brick and mortar branches and put up ATM about a half hour away from us. They wanted to transfer all our accounts to a different bank that opened a brick and mortar in the other direction 40 min. away but we resisted because we had been at our bank for over 24 years. If we transferred we would have lost all our account “advantages” we had earned over the years and had to revamp ALL of our financial accounts like utilities, insurances, etc. It is a great thing we didn’t go for the transfer because that “other” bank closed down their office near us 2 years later with no ATMs anywhere to be seen. But the one disadvantage is we have to still do all our banking virtually. Hopefully, what happened to this poor dude in Australia won’t happen to us.
Eventually you might have no choice but to bank that way.
Using your new centralized, global, digital currency…