Per Netbanker, this was the interaction via Twitter.

Here is the full Netbanker post.

I am sure many people in fintech expect Cardlytics to continue its rapid growth, now that they have secured a partnership with Bank of America, but will it be a windfall for financial institution partners, most of which are not direct white-label partners of Cardlytics?

What do you think? Financial windfall or not?

Here was my comment to Jim on the Netbanker site:

Jim, I love the enthusiasm (as always) and also marvel at the way you see adding $600K of additional income to our bank’s bottom line (I just paid for the channel and then some!).

Even though I really like the Cardlytics model, we need a few more things to happen. We need a few more BofA sized banking partnerships to drive adoption, we need to add more contextual and proximity based merchant modeling (and recruit FI customer/merchants to fill in categories and location).

Today, too many of these merchants are national chains and offers are not necessarily directly related to existing behavior. If you shop online and use your debit card at the Gap, does that mean that you also would use a coupon at Aeropostale? Maybe. If you shop at Target, are you going to shop at Redbox? Maybe not. Some of their targeting model makes sense, but without more merchants, they fail to deliver offers in context. The other great addition would be aggregated offers, meaning taking PFM data (read: credit card purchases) to provide FI Cardlytics clients the ability to provide discounts on non-bank purchases. Why not? We have the data. At least encourage debit card behavior at the primary FI by dipping into this feed and properly offering all relevant rewards. So we have some work to do to get 1-2 offers per customer per month. But again, I like the trend.

One other concern I would have is accessibility of the average FI to the Cardlytics platform. Are core providers like Fiserv, FIS, and online banking providers like Intuit (which offers Cardlytics through Purchase Rewards to hundreds of FIs) taking a cut of that $1-2 a month per user? Our industry has some phone calls to make I think. Check the contracts.

Congratulations to Cardlytics on their ongoing success and win at Finovate. They have a great team, and the Bank of America partnership demonstrates that (and the bank’s need for additional income streams).

We all need a bit of that.

Image by zcopley via Flickr

There was an interesting article and discussion today on American Banker‘s BankThink. American Banker’s Jeremy Quittner wrote an article about Bitcoin being highlighted in a legal case on an episode of the Good Wife this week. Brief Clip

If you want to learn more about Bitcoin, here’s another great Quittner article from a few week’s back For Banks, Digital Currency Poses Threat — and Opportunity

Read the Good Wide Bitcoin article here: ‘Cool, But a Hassle’: Bitcoin Tests Merchants’ Patience

I added comments on American Banker, and wondered what you thought of Bitcoin? What are you most focused on in fintech? Alternative currencies like Bitcoin/Facebook Credits/iTunes or mobile money movement through more traditional channels with less-traditional technologies (think Dwolla, Square, Paypal, etc). Am I missing something on alt-currencies? Let me know via Twitter: @leimer

Here were my comments on the American Banker post:

Are alternative payments like Bitcoin a curiosity or just a progression toward the ongoing transactional shift away from traditional banking (or traditional currencies for that matter)? Though the volume of alt-payments/mobile payments is growing rapidly (astronomically some might say), the vast majority of consumers and merchants still do not see the use of the established volume leader, Paypal (amazing growth under the recently departed Scott Thompson), as a form of regular payment activity.

The innovations of currency alternatives like Bitcoin (and mobile payments) are a great destination, a great promise of better technology and control around money movement and control for consumers and businesses, but it is often an overhyped ‘promise’ of what is to come…Yes, volumes are on the rise. Yes, some amazing technology is being developed and implemented. Yes, the user experiences around contactless payment (NFC, alternative POS), and alt-currencies (Facebook credits, even iTunes) are currently being established (certainly Google and Apple will have some say about this).

But how much do banks need to pay attention to alternative currencies? Yes, we should be prepared to integrate and embrace technology change around money movement of any kind. But, if you’re in banking or fintech, you’re probably more closely watching alt/mobile payment volumes rise and crafting/enhancing your payment/money movement technology at your own financial institutions in response. I wouldn’t worry as much about the Bitcoin model/alt currencies just yet. They’ll most likely take the back seat to money movement through traditional players (and in the alt-currency space, I would be more concerned about Facebook Credits than Bitcoin).

Money movement alternatives like Paypal, ZashPay, Cashedge/Fiserv’s PopMoney, Dwolla, Square (+ others) do have a built in ‘hassle’ within the user experience because of the need to link to additional traditional banking accounts somewhere. The person/merchant receiving funds also have to be on the same network or sign up/trust these providers. It seems like the only way to eliminate this is with an established alt-currency (how is the Euro working out, let alone the anti-banking alternative digital Bitcoins?), or an established open-API method of money movement (better solution). To address the overall UX, we need to integrate both technologies into the devices we carry everyday (our phones), whether it be through form factor (NFC/alt-device) or network apps (Paypal POS, Proxense, etc.). The UX still would take a back seat for alt-currencies like Bitcoin until you bridge the additional gap in the trust factor (Paypal itself, even with great UX, still isn’t as trusted for money transfers as a traditional financial institution).

We will have some time to watch these standards develop. As we watch the volume of alt-payments rise, the overall volume will be a limited space in the overall consumer/b2b payment pie. The true revolution in banking that everyone sees coming like a lumbering freight train is still there. It’s less about alt-currencies and more about overall experience through technology. But Movenbank and Simple aren’t going to change the world of banking overnight, nor has (or will) Bitcoin or Paypal for that matter. But changes are here, they’re real, and there are more are on the way (Paypal, Square, and Dwolla are will see monster jumps this year to be sure).

The fact that the Good Wife even tackled the subject is interesting. The audience for the episode probably increased awareness of Bitcoin in Peoria more than anything Bitcoin’s banking industry coverage ever did.

I recently contributed some thoughts on a recent post titled “10 Resolutions Bank Marketers Can’t Ignore in 2012″ which appeared on Jim Marous’s great blog Bank Marketing Strategy. The post went up on January 3, and was also featured on Finextra & Banking2020.com.

Here’s the start of the content with a link to Jim’s original full post (it’s worth the read…you can follow Jim on Twitter at @JimMarous).

________________

2011 was year that many bankers, and especially bank marketers would love to forget. Not only was focus diverted by the need to respond to new regulations for the second consecutive year (this time it was the Durbin Amendment), but the image of our entire industry was challenged as foreclosures and bank failures continued to be in the news.

We didn’t do ourselves any favors in 2011 either, as some of the larger banks learned the power of social media when they decided to increase (and then rescind) debit card fees, or when the industry fought internally with Bank Transfer Day.

The biggest impact of all of this noise was that attention was diverted from what should have been accomplished in 2011. As I reviewed my post from last year, Ten Bank Marketer Resolutions for 2011, it is clear that most bank marketers lacked the time/focus to make much progress on any of last year’s goals. So, in writing this year’s Bank Marketer Resolution post, I could have simply posted the same resolutions from last year (similar to what I do with some of my personal resolutions). Instead, I reached out to bank industry leaders from across the globe for their ideas. There was surprising uniformity in their suggestions, and a sense of urgency around the need to achieve much more than last year.

So here are the resolutions bank marketers should not ignore in 2012 according to industry leaders:

1. Validate The Value of Marketing Through Measurement: As highlighted in my recent post 100 Years Later, Marketers Still Have Difficulty Measuring Up, there is still a tremendous gap between what bank marketers implement and what is measured. Not only are there almost 20% of marketers who don’t find measurement of results imperative according to recent research by Ifbyphone, but less that 50% of any channel is measured. Dan Marks from First Tennessee says, “Bank marketers should resolve to measure and optimize true marketing ROI – having the courage to seek out the unproductive part of the marketing mix and replace it with other activities that generate real shareholder returns.” Serge Milman, CEO of Optirate states, “In 2012, bank marketers should resolve to have a more diligent focus placed on business drivers that can help manage and grow the bank,” while Bradley Leimer, vice president of online/mobile strategy at Mechanics Bank said that, “The number one resolution for bank marketers in 2012 must be to ‘put data first,’ since the proof of any program resides in the measurement of results.”

Jeffry Pilcher from The Financial Brand added a common sense resolution that is not always followed . . . “stop doing things that don’t work.” It is clear that if only one resolution can be accomplished in 2012, the measurement of attribution and program results is the most important.

View the Rest of the 10 Resolutions for 2012 for Bank Marketers

I added additional comments to Jim’s blog, which I’ll also include here:

Bradley Leimer said…

Let me expand on my comments regarding data and measurement a bit.

Most of us would like to say we put results first. This means our marketing efforts, our channel activity, everything we do as marketers, have data points around them working to improve ROI, expand customer relationships, and improve the effectiveness of our marketing …but that’s not the reality.

When it comes to ‘Big Data’ and effective measurement tied to results, we need to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff.

The key is the ability to filter new and existing sources of data to pull the most pertinent metrics to mirror our business strategies.

While I generally would suggest we track/collect every potentially meaningful data point we can (you can always use leverage this data through analytics/data models later), the truth is that our industry has been trying to leverage ‘Big Data’ for years.

And most financial institutions have failed miserably at utilizing existing streams of big data. We are sitting on top of a goldmine of data, and it’s just becoming more of a deluge.

This goes for leveraging trends in transaction data, channel activity data, account changes, inbound and branch based interactions, CRM analysis, online and mobile transactions, credit data, and more. Now you add social graph and other sources of user generated content and we are simply compounding the issue, and making data storage facilities buckle.

Our industry has so much to offer our clients from the data we collect, from increased retention efforts through relevant offers, to real time account alerts that offer new levels of connectedness, to improvements in service that create genuine customer delight.

But we generally don’t focus on things that help our customers. We use data to justify our budgets, to justify marketing and technology efforts. Let’s step back and focus on data points that impact the customer advocacy that Ron Shevlin discusses in his post.

Let’s focus on streamlining ‘Big Data’ relevancy and work toward focused service goals in 2012.

As data sources continue to expand, we should be to take a good look at what we have already overlooked. Pick our spots to match advocacy metric to result.

Turn the morass of Big Data into targeted Small Data through filtering specific goals win. This will help you truly build customer intelligence in the long term.
January 3, 2012 7:57 PM

Learn more about SOPA and PIPA

Post From Mashable

As announced, Wikipedia’s main page is “blackened” today in protest of the controversial Stop online privacy act (SOPA). For millions of Wikipedia visitors today, the message will be clear: one of the most influential sites and communities on the internet is clearly against SOPA. Many other sites, including Reddit, will join the protest by shutting down or “blacking out” their homepages today.

Source for Payment Ecosystem Graphic Visit Payfirma.

While my quote (see the original post linked below) demonstrates that I feel mobile will finally hit its long-awaited stride in 2012, there is so much more opportunity for the average community institution to gain ground in 2012. Will there be unexpected challenges? No doubt. Technology alone is rapidly changing the competitive landscape in banking, and payment alone is starting to crumble down the barriers on what was once considered core banking services. But banks and credit unions offer much more than that.

What are we going to see in 2012? What are your plans?

What do you see as some of our biggest challenges and opportunities in 2012?

Chime in.

From the original post on banking.com:

“2012 will finally see the tipping point for mobile banking. Mobile moves beyond today’s limited functionality and starts to become the primary remote customer channel. Look for some interesting corporate bedfellows to emerge as the financial services ecosystem starts validating mobile payment business models and the importance of controlling new methods of money transfers and payments. We will see continued disruption in the space, as it relates to payments, security protocols, features like proximity rewards, integrated p2p and a2a with social tether, account opening, and more. Expect feature rich device agnostic applications that enhance usability and user experience across a range of mobile and tablet devices.” Bradley G. Leimer, Vice President, Online and Mobile Strategy at Mechanics Bank (@leimer)

Full Post @ Banking.com

Continued success to the BankSimple team, and to the ongoing disruption in the space. For the video below, I highly recommend making it full screen to really experience the UI of the product.

BankSimple Demo from BankSimple on Vimeo.

We can loosely define the social enterprise as the democratization of business processes through technology channels that remove barriers for engaging communication by flattening organizational levels, enhance the sharing of innovation and ideas and increase opportunities for enriched connections among employees, customers and inter-related groups.

By leveraging the social model, the banking industry has the potential for a dynamic period of innovation, and an even chance of remaining relevant to our customers — and employees — as they gain control of the conversation.

During the conference keynote, Salesforce.com’s CEO, Marc Benioff drew a comparison between the social powered revolutions we saw during the Arab Spring and the evolution within the business world. Though Salesforce is recognized for innovation in cloud computing and customer relationship management, the company’s deliberate pivot to embrace social technologies as integral to their business model is significant for the banking industry, which has historically been less than accommodating toward new technologies.

Read the full post on American Banker’s BankThink.

What do you think?

You can follow me on Twitter, connect on LinkedIn, and add me to your circles on Google+.

Additional Media featuring @leimer
Friends With Benefits (Bank Technology News)
Bankers, Pay Attention to Google+ (American Banker Bank Think)
Smart Phones Alter Banking Landscape (ABA Banking Journal)
Dickens' Spirits Speak on Tech Spending (American Banker Bank Think)
A 'Hunch' That Could Yield Useful Marketing Lessons (American Banker Bank Think) 
How to Get Started in Social Media (American Banker)
5 Social Media Best Practices (Information Week Financial Services)
Social Media Best Practices (Adobe Experience Delivers)
"The Deer Have Guns" (American Banker)
Citi, USAA Execs Share Social Media Best Practices (Bank Systems & Technology)
Reviewed: Bank 2.0
Celent Banking Innovation and Insight Day Recap 
Celent Event Photos 
Celent Innovation & Insight Day - Social Media Panel 

(excerpt from Glen Fest’s article on BTN and American Banker)

Even at this early stage of adoption, the potential pitfalls of social media data collection are apparent. Consumer groups, regulators and legislators already are pushing back over privacy concerns, worried that companies will cross the line dividing aggregated data from sensitive, identifying personal information. Compliance questions also are being raised as to whether using social media data in credit decisions—a likely evolution, experts say—could trip violations of equal-credit or fair-lending laws. Another major concern for banks is how to use accumulated social media data without offending customers.

The sophistication of social media tracking and aggregation tools already available leaves Bradley Leimer awestruck. Leimer,  a self-described “discerning technologist,” says he recently witnessed a demonstration of a system that could customize information on a website to appeal to specific visitors, based on their preferences according to Facebook. The demo showed how an online electronics store, for example, might tap into a consumer’s love of pets and sports and “put a dog or football game on the screen of a TV they are trying to sell,” Leimer says.

Read the post in the digital version of the August 2011 edition of American Banker.

Read the full post on Bank Technology News and American Banker

While I won’t be providing a complete tick tock of our MeetUp in this post, it was great to talk about the future of banking and the shift in technology and customer expectations with some of the more innovative thinkers in the space.  It was also nice to meet and talk shop in person after conversing through Twitter. While I am huge proponent of social collaboration and conversation, nothing beats the impromptu dialogue of a conference break out session or panel, and all those side conversations that inevitably occur.  I applaud Brett’s efforts to set up MeetUp’s during his business trips, and encourage others to embrace social connections and follow suit.

I really enjoyed talking to Michael Degnan and learning more about Sapient Nitro’s involvement in engagement banking, as well as talking social data.  How can a user’s social graph be leveraged to offer enhancements to the customer experience and transaction components for traditional banking channels? What about ways to improve the investing and portfolio management customer experience?  We talked about the latter after Brett announced S&P’s credit downgrade of the U.S. government to the group. Talk about a conversation thud – “the most risk-free investment now has risk”.  Boom. Now it was some time for some navel gazing and a moment to ponder Monday’s market open and how our portfolios melt away.

Outside of that news-bomb, it was great to get an update on Lending Club, and hear about their recent funding successes.  As companies and personal investors look for better returns and diversification (especially in light of recent events), the social lending space will continue to grow (Lending Club added $20M in new loans in June alone).  More power to them if the larger banks aren’t as willing to lend and embrace the social aspect of what has been estimated to be at $60B P2P market through family and friend loans.  Propser, the other big-player in the space along with Zopa, has received huge rounds of investment of late, including $150M in June, and another $17M from Google’s Eric Schmidt.

Brett’s project list is intriguing as well, including a follow up to his successful book, Bank 2.0, which has been an industry board room topic since it launched last year.  I was especially interested in learning more about his mobile-optimized banking startup MovenBank, which has promise to be an important player in the banking landscape.  Brett talked about how MovenBank is being designed to remove the friction caused by existing technology and locational constraint that exists between financial institutions and their customers today.  I imagine that Brett’s literal napkin diagram of the existing banking structural constraints has been repeated across the jet-setting pace of his past year’s conference schedule. I remarked about my feeling of deja vu after seeing Al Gore deliver his “Inconvenient Truth” presentation with my wife in San Francisco two years before the book and movie came out (though Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown weren’t seated at the table as they were when we saw Gore) .  It makes sense that the author of Bank 2.0 would be designing customer-experience-driven processes to avoid the tension created by existing banking structures, and that is exactly why it’s engaging.  There’ll be many of us in the industry secretly rooting for MovenBank.

Whether MovenBank intrigues the larger banking community as much as BankSimple has (or had, at least by the dearth of recent coverage) remains to be seen.  I can only hope that Brett’s partners will continue to do something the banking industry sorely needs, and that is to further shake things up to the benefit of the banking customer and for the overall user-experience (which has huge gaps, as you occasionally see in my tweets about online banking, PFM, mobile, and UX).  The other purpose of MovenBank, in my opinion, is to inspire further innovation.  Companies waving the flag of true innovation are rare in the financial services industry, whether this is due to natural barriers of entry or the conservative nature of bank technologists and their C-level counter-suits. Disruption isn’t just coming, it’s already here (e.g. mobile payment).

We need to create more Bank 2.0 converts and more “engaged bankers” in our industry (maybe by the time Bank “3.0″ or whatever Brett calls it comes out, more of the industry will have read his first book).  As a reluctant “banker” (I don’t think anyone in banking technology, analytics/data or financial marketing ever really calls themselves a ‘banker’),  one has to encourage this type of industry-shaking thinking and technology development however we can (as I covered in a year-end post on American Banker’s BankThink).  If not to benefit the customers and industry we serve, but to improve our own user experience as consumers and business owners as well.

What do you think?

You can follow me on Twitter, connect on LinkedIn, and add me to your circles on Google+.

Additional Media featuring @leimer
Friends With Benefits (Bank Technology News)
Bankers, Pay Attention to Google+ (American Banker Bank Think)
Smart Phones Alter Banking Landscape (ABA Banking Journal)
Dickens' Spirits Speak on Tech Spending (American Banker Bank Think)
A 'Hunch' That Could Yield Useful Marketing Lessons (American Banker Bank Think) 
How to Get Started in Social Media (American Banker)
5 Social Media Best Practices (Information Week Financial Services)
Social Media Best Practices (Adobe Experience Delivers)
"The Deer Have Guns" (American Banker)
Citi, USAA Execs Share Social Media Best Practices (Bank Systems & Technology)
Reviewed: Bank 2.0
Celent Banking Innovation and Insight Day Recap 
Celent Event Photos 
Celent Innovation & Insight Day - Social Media Panel