An online-only bank (with ATM support of course) that lets you have as many "virtual" accounts as you want, and lets you set up programmatic rules for transferring money in between accounts on certain days/times, or triggered by events ("transfer $100 from B to A if account A goes below $100, and notify me by email"; "on overdraft from A, withdraw from B instead"). Then have a debit card that you can use to charge to any of your accounts, and an app that lets you configure which account it's drawing from.
This would make "budgeting" very easy. Have a "food" account, an "entertainment" account, etc. Do weekly or monthly budgets by transferring money into your mini-accounts, and denying transactions for each account when it goes over budget. (Or let the transaction go through from a backup account, but notify you that you went over budget.)
Also, have an API that anyone can write apps for.
Of course, I'll never do this because starting a bank is really hard.
They do and it's very helpful, however, since they are technically "savings" accounts and CapitalOne 360 (like all banks) makes more money the longer we keep our cash in one place, they limit the number of transactions out of any of those accounts to 6 per month.
For that and other reasons, I think the proposed system is worth exploring.
I'd like to see a not for profit bank in the sense that the profit the bank does make, goes directly back into the local community surrounding the bank. The bank would have a physical presence but strong and modern on-line support.
This would make "budgeting" very easy. Have a "food" account, an "entertainment" account, etc. Do weekly or monthly budgets by transferring money into your mini-accounts, and denying transactions for each account when it goes over budget. (Or let the transaction go through from a backup account, but notify you that you went over budget.)
Also, have an API that anyone can write apps for.
Of course, I'll never do this because starting a bank is really hard.