Palo Alto Networks’ Nir Zuk unveils digital bank offering radical transparency

Esh, Israel’s newest digital bank, unveiled its plan to share half of its interest income with customers, promising fee-free current accounts and a model it says will upend the traditional banking system.

According to the model, 50% of the bank’s income from customers’ current accounts will be returned to them, in what the bank calls “Equal Sharing”, the principle from which its name, Esh, is derived. The bank argues this will eliminate the inherent conflict of interest between banks, which seek to minimize interest payments, and customers.

The account will be offered free of charge, without commissions (as in traditional banks) and without subscription fees (as in the digital bank One Zero). It will also be available to small businesses and the self-employed. However, it is a relatively “thin” account, focusing on basic banking services: current account management, deposits (with 50%–80% of related income distributed back to customers), and credit. The bank will not offer mortgages, securities trading, or, at least initially, foreign exchange services.

Yuval Aloni, the group’s CEO and one of the founders, explained: “There is a built-in conflict of interest in the way the banking system works today, between what money actually does and what we as customers receive from it. How do we solve this? Through radical transparency. At Esh Bank, a customer can see in real time exactly how much money the bank makes from their deposits, how much is held for liquidity, how much is lent, and how much income is generated. But transparency isn’t enough: we will share half of the revenue with customers.”

Aloni added that, under current interest rate conditions, customers would receive around 3% on current account balances. Chairman of the Board Shmuel Hauser noted: “If we were a large Israeli bank managing about 250 billion shekels in liquid current accounts, under today’s market conditions, customers would receive 5.8 billion shekels from us annually.”

The launch clarified many details of Esh’s operating model. The bank, licensed by the Bank of Israel in December 2022, becomes the second new Israeli bank in 45 years, following the digital bank One Zero, which began operations in August 2022.

Still, Esh emphasized that it has revealed only part of its offering. Founder Nir Zuk, also the founder of Palo Alto Networks (valued at about $131 billion on Nasdaq), said that additional “credit products that do not exist in Israel, and some that do not exist anywhere in the world” will be introduced later. The bank also stated it will not allow overdrafts.

Esh is expected to roll out gradually in 2026. No official launch date has been set, but the first expansion phase is expected in early 2026, when the hundreds of customers who took part in testing will be able to invite others to join.

The bank’s ownership is divided between Zuk’s investor group and institutional entities. Management is headed by CEO Kobi Malkin and Chairman Shmuel Hauser. Aloni, one of the founders, serves as group CEO.

According to Malkin, Esh’s ability to return a large share of interest income to customers without charging fees stems from its proprietary technology platform, which enables extremely low operating costs.

“Whether we serve 50,000, 5 million, or 50 million customers, we will not need more than 70 employees to run the bank,” he said.

Esh will also allow American citizens to open accounts, a feature currently unavailable at One Zero. In the first phase, however, joint accounts will not be offered.