This Week in Engagement Banking we take a look at the ‘gamification’ of banking (The Department of the Treasury, really?) and tell you why you should care about HTML5. Also, ZooZ allows for access to many payment options and you get to see what it’s like for Banks to innovate on a sinking ship.
Bank Innovation
Playing Around: The Next Generation of Banking Games Come Online
The notion of gamification was not conceptualized until 2010, when the idea developed that games – more formally, game design thinking — could be applied to non-game applications to make them, well, more fun and engaging. We’re talking about becoming a “mayor” on Foursquare and the like. But games, and I mean outright games, seem to have taken hold in banking just this week. There are two notable initiatives that have kicked off, and they offer proof positive that bankers are really starting to play around. The first new game comes from American Express. American Express has started pushing out a mobile game on Trivial Technology, a developer of mobile games of chance like hearts and gin rummy. The Amex game comes from the shopAmex brand and challenges users to know their local shopping. When I played the game, it asked me to identify which of three establishments served ice cream (I got that answer right) and to match Manhattan neighborhoods to three notable restaurants (I botched that one). The game was a nice way of “playing” with the notion of shopping locally. . . . More.
American Banker
One Mobile Payment System to Provide Many Options
Though ZooZ is now the exclusive payment option for merchants using the mobile commerce platform provider MobiCart, this week’s agreement linking the two tech companies is, paradoxically, about providing access to as many payment options as possible. The companies announced their deal in a time when an enormous amount of attention is being paid to an increasingly fragmented mobile payment market. Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT) just announced their own takes on the mobile wallet, and Google (GOOG) refreshed the pricing of its own wallet this week at a conference it hosts for developers. “Everyone wants a chunk out of it but … it’s not ‘one winner takes it all’ in my opinion,” says Oren Levy, CEO and co-founder of ZooZ. “There is a need in the world for multiple payment options.” ZooZ, an Israeli company founded in 2010, provides technology that serves as the backbone for payments made within mobile apps. It allows developers to accept payments by credit card or PayPal without setting up a separate merchant account. . . . More.
BankNXT
Innovating on a sinking ship: the Innotribe Belfast write up
I’ve already given some reflections on last week’s Innotribe Belfast meeting in my write ups of Metro Bank and Fidor Bank. Now, for a more general write-up, I’ve taken the inputs of Kosta Peric, the SWIFT innovation group leader who runs Innotribe; the Innotribe start-up details; and the input of participating company Allevo; to put together my own summary of the whole thing. The first thing that struck me is what a strange choice of location: the Titanic Museum. Are banks sinking so fast? Will only a third of the bank’s passengers survive? Has all the money in the world iced over? Well, no. As Kosta Peric puts it: When Matteo Rizzi (@matteorizzi) of Innotribe, the curator for the Belfast event, suggested this venue, I thought it was genius. I think that the financial industry is going through a dramatic change, fueled by technology and social media. The “too big to fail” ships in the industry are facing dangerous waters ahead. Like the Titanic was. Innotribe@Belfast was about understanding what is happening, co-creating solutions and planning ahead. And it proved to be an interesting venue in its own right. . . . More.
GONZO Banker
HTML 5: Why Should You Care?
As the latest release of the HTML specification, HTML5 has the potential to profoundly change the way financial institutions market and deliver their products online. What makes it worth investigating and adopting as a development tool set? Why should we push our providers to develop the next generation of solutions using this specification? Enter the HTML5 private utility application. Private utility apps provide users with information or the means to accomplish a task, as opposed to entertainment apps, which help us waste time (thanks, Angry Birds). They also differ from entertainment apps in that they are generally designed for a specific audience, while an entertainment app needs the widest possible audience. Apple’s App Store and Android’s Google Play do not best suit the needs of the companies that create, release and support utility applications like mobile banking and content providers (newspapers, magazines, etc.). Although the HTML5 specification is not yet complete, The Financial Times, The Boston Globe and The Economist have all released HTML5-based private utility apps. The Financial Times launched its site in June 2011 and had one million subscribers by November! Here are some more statistics to chew on . . . More.
The Financial Brand
Big Bank Customers With $675 Billion In Deposits Itching To Switch
Customers holding hundreds of billions in deposits at Citi, BofA and other big banks are up for grabs. Regional- and community-based financial institutions smelling opportunity will be circling like sharks. A report from Javelin Strategy & Research reveals that 11% of all U.S. consumers are threatening to switch their primary financial institution sometime in 2012. The biggest banks face even larger defections, with Citi and BofA at risk of losing twice that many customers. Javelin predicts the five largest U.S. banks could see as much as $675 billion in potential lost deposits. These prickly big bank customers should be easy pickings for smaller financial institutions. Compounding revenue challenges for retail financial institutions, likely switchers also say they are only willing to pay fees for a very narrow range of services — four in total: money orders, cashier’s checks, safe-deposit boxes, and mobile deposit. Javelin estimates that the revenue opportunity among likely switchers to total around $92 million. . . . More.
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