Technology has its eyes on banking. Apple is expected this week to launch Apple Pay, its touchless payment system for iPhones; venture capital funds are pouring money into “fintech” start-ups; and Marc Andreessen, the technology entrepreneur, talks of “a chance to rebuild the system. Financial transactions are just numbers; it’s just information.”

Mr Andreessen, a partner of the venture fund Andreessen Horowitz, added in an interview with Bloomberg Markets magazine last week: “To me, it’s all about unbundling the banks. There are regulatory arbitrage opportunities every step of the way. If the regulators are going to regulate banks, then you’ll have non-bank entities that spring up to do the things that banks can’t do.”

This raises plenty of questions, not least about the last time non-bank entities (also known as the shadow banking system) took over financial intermediation below the radar, stoking the 2008 financial crisis. But my question is: does Silicon Valley really want to blow up retail banking and create an entirely new financial system, or would it prefer to ride on the existing one?