The Great Un-Banking

How Banks Are Un-Inventing Convenience to Fight Fraud

I once lost my wallet at a petrol station somewhere between Reading and Oxford. Realised it about forty minutes later, turned around, and drove back in a mild panic. When I got there, the bloke behind the counter handed it over without a word. Everything still inside. Cash, cards, the lot.

The reason it was still there was that I’d left it on the actual counter while fumbling with my phone, right in front of the cashier. He saw it immediately, put it aside, and when I came back, he just handed it over.

If I’d dropped it in the car park or left it by the pumps, it would’ve been gone. But at a physical counter, with a human watching the transaction space, that wallet never had a chance to disappear. The physical presence, the human oversight - that was the security.

Which brings me to Hong Kong’s banks. They’ve just invented the most revolutionary banking product of 2025: an account that’s deliberately annoying to use.

The Innovation Nobody Asked For

They’re calling it a “Money Safe.” The concept is breathtaking in its simplicity: you put money into a special account, and when you want to access it, you have to physically visit a bank branch and verify your identity face-to-face. That’s it. That’s the entire innovation. They’ve spent the last forty years digitising banking to eliminate queues, and now they’re launching accounts where queuing is the core feature.

Digital banks without physical branches have to make you visit their offices. The future of fintech is a counter with a human behind it, checking your ID while you stand there feeling like you’ve time-travelled to 1987.

Hong Kong’s government is actively promoting these accounts, encouraging residents to store any cash they don’t need immediately. The Monetary Authority gave every bank in the territory until December 31st to implement Money Safe accounts. All of them complied. Some are already advertising their version as superior to competitors.

Scammers have got so sophisticated at setting up fraudulent internet banking accounts and draining funds that the only solution is to un-invent digital access entirely.

How We Got Here

Online banking got so comprehensively infiltrated by fraud that making it harder to use became the only defence left. Hong Kong’s financial services industry accounts for a quarter of its GDP. The territory’s government sends out warnings about phishing campaigns and fake bank websites almost daily. They’re under constant, relentless attack.

The mechanism is grimly simple. Scammers create internet banking accounts without customers knowing, or trick customers into transferring funds to accounts they control. The speed and convenience of digital banking - the entire reason it exists - is precisely what makes it lethal. You can drain an account in seconds from anywhere in the world.

So the banks looked at the problem and reached a conclusion that would make a 1980s bank manager weep with vindication: the only money that’s truly safe is money you have to physically show up to access.

The Money Safe forces a “cooling off” period. When you want your money, you book an appointment, travel to a branch, queue, undergo “face-to-face anti-scam verification,” and only then can you access your funds. The friction is the entire product. They’re selling you inconvenience as a feature.

What This Actually Means for You

Look, I know what you’re thinking. This is Hong Kong. This doesn’t affect you. You’re not putting money into a territory that requires in-person verification.

But this is coming everywhere, just in different forms.

First question to ask yourself: What am I optimising for, convenience or safety? Because you’re increasingly not allowed to have both. Every “tap to pay” feature, every “save this card for faster checkout,” every “enable biometric login” is a choice. Not between speed and slightly less speed, but between access and security. Money Safe is just the extreme version of admitting those things are now opposites.

Second: Audit your actual vulnerability. I went through my banking apps and realised I had enabled every possible convenience feature. Fingerprint login, saved payees, instant transfers, the works. Each one is a potential entry point. I haven’t gone full Money Safe. I’m not queuing at NatWest every week. But I did disable instant transfers over a certain amount. Now there’s a 24-hour delay on large payments. It’s annoying. It’s also probably the only reason I’ll notice if someone’s trying to drain my account.

Third: Understand that “secure” increasingly means “inconvenient”. Two-factor authentication isn’t a temporary security measure until they sort out a better system. Physical security keys aren’t a stopgap. The better system isn’t coming. This IS the better system. The most secure way to store anything valuable is to make it a massive pain to access. That’s not going to change, no matter how many biometric promises the tech industry makes.

Fourth: Decide what’s worth protecting with friction. I now have three types of accounts: daily spending (fast, convenient, low balance), savings (delayed access, inconvenient, larger amounts), and emergency funds (genuinely difficult to access, maximum friction). The most important money has the most irritating security.

The brutal truth is that the entire promise of fintech - instant access to your money from anywhere - has made money fundamentally less safe. Hong Kong’s solution is to just admit it and sell you a product that removes the instant access part. It’s honest, at least.

Back to the Counter

I still think about that wallet at the petrol station sometimes. The reason it was safe wasn’t sophisticated security or clever technology. It was just dumb luck - a human behind a counter, probably a dozen security cameras, and the fact that nicking a wallet in full view of both seemed like a terrible idea. The petrol station didn’t design it that way. They just had a counter and a bloke working it.

Hong Kong’s banks have just taken that accidental safety and turned it into a deliberate product. They’ve looked at what made my wallet survive and thought, “Right, let’s make THAT the feature.” Human presence isn’t a happy accident anymore. It’s the entire security model.

Sometimes, the only thing protecting your stuff is the fact that taking it requires effort and witnesses. They’ve just productized the concept and given it a marketing name.

The innovation of the decade is admitting that going backwards is the only way forward. Welcome to the Great Un-Banking. Your money’s perfectly safe. You just can’t bloody use it.