Small Bank in Kansas Is a Financial Testing Ground

New York Times
Saturday, December 13, 2014

CBW (formerly The Citizens Bank of Weir) has been rebuilt to offer high-tech services not available at even the largest banks. Former Google employee Suresh Ramamurthi and his wife, Suchitra Padmanabhan, bought the tiny bank in 2009. Working with a team of software engineers, they have used it as a testing ground for a range of innovative financial services. Most promising is an instant payment system similar to wire payments — but much cheaper. The transfers rely on a custom built back-end that instantly rates the risk of transactions using 20 to 40 factors, including a customer’s transaction history and location. The fees from this service and others dwarfs the money that CBW makes in Weir; in the last quarter, the bank earned $60,000 from its loans and $720,000 from the rest of its business.