Bank supervision in America is unfit for the digital age

HERE COME the Germans. On May 21st Raisin, a “deposit marketplace” from Berlin, declared its intention to set up shop in America. Within a year Raisin hopes to follow its compatriot, N26, a mobile bank that is due to open there soon. Yet neither will, technically, be a bank. Remarkably, no such startup yet has a national banking charter in America, although the country is a hotbed of financial technology, spawning innovators from PayPal to Quicken Loans.