Brett King outlines how banking is shifting from a place you go to something you do, driven by mobile technology, customer expectations, and real-time context.

Key Themes:

• From Messaging to Dialogue: Radio and TV were one-way communication, but the internet unlocked dialogue. In banking, this means building two-way, real-time relationships with customers.
• Technology with a Human Touch: While digital channels are powerful, people still crave personalized, human-centered advice—similar to Apple’s ability to build strong emotional connections.
• The Future Customer Journey: Imagine entering a car dealership with smart glasses—your bank instantly advises if you can afford the car, what financing options exist, and the monthly cost.
• Smart Financial Guidance: Banks could help customers make better financial decisions by providing real-time contextual reminders (e.g., “If you buy this TV, you won’t be able to pay rent next month”).
• Mobile First: For companies like Starbucks, mobile payments are already mainstream (nearly 30% of transactions through their app). Banking must follow suit, making mobile the primary interface.
• Banking as Advice, Not Just Transactions: The real opportunity is for banks to evolve from transaction processors into advisors and community connectors.
• Social Media’s Role: Not about marketing, but creating genuine communities and trust that extend beyond traditional banking.
• Mobile + Context = Differentiation: With mobile, banks can engage customers before, during, and after a transaction, making them a trusted daily companion rather than a distant service provider.

Brett King opens his keynote by reflecting on the unpredictability of predictions. He recalls how tech giants like Microsoft and Nokia once imagined the future of banking with mobile payments back in 2005—visions that later materialized through innovations like Uber.

Key Themes:

• Disruption is About Experience, Not Just Technology:
  Uber didn’t just disrupt transport, it transformed the experience of getting from A to B. In banking, the biggest disruption will come from rethinking customer experience, not just payment forms or backend processes.
• The Smartphone as the Core Driver:
  More than the internet itself, the smartphone is the most powerful enabler of financial change. It’s contextual, always with us, and influences how we make banking and payment decisions in real time.
• Supercomputers in Our Pockets:
  King compares today’s smartphones (with Snapdragon processors and gigahertz speeds) to the computing power of HSBC in 1985. Each device we carry now has millions of times more processing power, shifting the balance of power between banks and customers.
• The Future of Financial Services:
  In 50 years, the most profound change won’t be a single product but how finance is experienced daily seamless, embedded, contextual, and customer-first.

My journey in banking started as a programmer in Australia, working with banks that didn’t understand technology—and tech teams that couldn’t explain it to bankers. I became a translator between the two.

By 2005, I was presenting to HSBC on the future of banking—how digital would transform everything. They didn’t move fast enough, so I took my report and wrote Bank 2.0. That began my path of showing how technology would reshape finance.

• Bank 1.0 was the branch era. The oldest bank in the world still looks like it did 700 years ago.
• Bank 2.0 came with the internet. But instead of rethinking banking, we just put statements online.
• Bank 3.0 arrived with mobile. At Moven, we launched the world’s first mobile-only bank account. Regulators said it was impossible without paper signatures—until we proved it was actually safer.

Now we’re entering Bank 4.0. Banking is no longer somewhere you go. It’s something you do. It’s built into life through AI, voice assistants, smart devices, and behavior-driven design.

Look at China—Alipay and WeChat didn’t sell savings accounts. They changed savings behavior, making it effortless to move leftover wallet funds into interest-bearing accounts. That’s why Yu’e Bao grew to over $260 billion in deposits.

The key lesson? Disruption comes not from improving old models, but from rethinking them entirely.
Cars didn’t improve horse-drawn carriages—they replaced them.
The iPhone didn’t improve Nokia—it redefined the phone.
Elon Musk didn’t improve NASA rockets—he redesigned them from scratch, cutting launch costs by 98%.

That’s first principles design. And that’s what fintech challengers are doing.

The future of banking is AI-driven:
– “Can I afford to eat out tonight?” → Your bank will answer instantly.
– Smart accounts will predict your needs for credit, savings, and spending, and act in real time.
– Banks that cling to products like plastic cards or paper signatures will be irrelevant.

By 2025, most people will have a bank account or wallet they never got from a branch. By 2030, the world’s biggest “bank” will likely be a tech company, not a traditional institution.

The biggest risk is doing nothing. The second-biggest risk is just copying the old model onto digital. To survive, banks must reimagine themselves through technology.

That’s Bank 4.0.

Brett King has been called the king of disruptors, a futurist, entrepreneur, and bestselling author. He’s advised the Obama administration, spoken at major universities and events, and hosts the top-ranked show Breaking Banks.

In this keynote, Brett explores Bank 4.0 and how digital is transforming finance.

Banking has deep historical roots. The word “bank” comes from the Italian banco—the marble benches where moneylenders sat. If one failed, the bench was smashed (banco rotto → “bankrupt”). Mortgages come from the Latin mort gage (“pledge of the dead”), and checks trace back to Persian tuk. Much of our industry’s language and products are centuries old.

Real disruption didn’t come until the 1950s, when Bank of America deployed the first mainframe computer to process checks. That’s when account numbers were invented. In the 1980s and 90s, ATMs, phone banking, and the internet extended bank access, but always by copying branch models—tellers, statements, forms.

Bank 3.0 began with the iPhone. For the first time, banks were forced to think differently: 24/7, real-time, mobile-first. At Moven, Brett’s team built the first downloadable bank account—without signatures. Regulators said it was impossible, until they proved it was safer than paper.

In China, Alipay launched Yu’e Bao, a savings feature that converted leftover wallet balances into deposits. Within years it held more than $300 billion bigger than most banks. Not a “product,” but a behavioral shift.

Disruption doesn’t happen by iteration. Cars didn’t make horses faster—they replaced them. SpaceX didn’t improve NASA rockets—it reengineered them, cutting launch costs by 98%. The iPhone didn’t tweak Nokias—it reinvented the phone. That’s first principles design, and it’s coming to banking.

Apple Pay took plastic cards and put them in phones design by analogy. China skipped cards altogether, moving straight from QR codes to face payments. In 2018, Alipay and WeChat processed $22 trillion more than Visa and Mastercard combined.

The next disruptor is AI. We used to think of robots in human form, but real AI isn’t humanoid it’s neural networks, learning patterns from data. AlphaZero learned to master chess in 4 hours. AI investment tools in China already bypass paper risk forms.

AI will give contextual advice:
– “Can I afford dinner tonight?”
– “When can I buy a house?”
– “Should I upgrade my phone?”

Banks won’t win on branches or products, but on data, behavior, and context.

We’re seeing this now:
– Moven uses impulse savings nudges, prompting customers at the right moment to set money aside.
– Uber embedded bank accounts into its driver app when 30% of drivers quit sign-up because they had no bank. Within months, Uber became one of the largest acquirers of small business accounts in the U.S.

The future of banking isn’t about selling credit cards it’s about delivering real-time credit in context. Walk into a grocery store short on cash, and your phone offers you an instant microloan. That’s Bank 4.0.

By 2025, most people will download a bank account to their phone before ever visiting a branch. By 2030, the largest “bank” may not be a bank at all it will likely be a tech company like Ant Financial.

The biggest risk? Doing nothing. The second biggest? Simply copying old branch models into digital channels. The only way forward is to reimagine banking through technology.

That’s Bank 4.0.