Jim Bruene, Author at Finovate

Back Story: Wall Street Journal’s Article on Online Financial Planning Tools from Banks

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 13, 2007
Categories: Bank of America, Online Banking Report, Personal Financial Management, Wells Fargo, Yodlee

The Wall Street Journal published an extra section yesterday on personal finance entitled, Your Money Matters. Online financial tools were highlighted in Jane Kim's, "Check it Out: New online tools from financial institutions can help consumers manage their money."

Here's the back story on several of the items mentioned in the article:

Our sister publication, Online Banking Report, was cited as the source of the following statistic: "About 16% of U.S. households used some personal-finance feature at least once in 2006. That percentage is expected to climb to an estimated 33% by 2016, with nearly three-quarters of those households using personal-finance tools offered by their financial institution online."
The information cited in the WSJ story was contained in the report we published last fall in Personal Finance Features for Online Banking (OBR 131/132; see Table 3, p. 3, lines 4 and 10). Current usage estimates were based in part from data provided by Javelin Strategy as shown in Table 2 on the same page.
In the article, Bank of America's My Portfolio was the first of two existing personal finance tools mentioned. The service, powered by Yodlee, was quietly launched in December and was covered in NetBanker at the time (link here) and received an OBR Best of the Web award in our final report of 2006 (OBR 137) where it was rated the third most important development of 2006.
The second example cited was Wells Fargo's MySpendingReport (see inset and previous coverage here). The service, which is basically just a consolidated view statement data across the bank's transaction accounts, is a great example of positioning online banking features in a way that resonates with users. It was awarded an OBR Best of the Web in 2005, finishing the year as the tenth most important new development of the year (report here).

The story finished with hints of new services planned for later this year at Everbank, Bremer Financial (powered by Corillian), and a Digital Insight tool that allows users to hand enter additional bill payments in order to their entire payments picture in one place.

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Futuristic Friday: Banks in Second Life

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 10, 2007
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, ING Direct, Second Life

Second Life, the alternate reality with four million members worldwide, has a surprising driver, capitalism. According to Second Life Insider, US$1.5 million changed hands yesterday (link here). And if there's money changing hands, there are opportunities for banks and financial scammers (not necessarily in that order).

In a March 6 search, Second Life Insider found ten banks operating in Second Life (SL) (post here). Several operate only in Second Life, raising numerous questions about the legitimacy of these non-regulated entities.

But what most interests us are the six real-world banks that have set up shop in Second Life such as ING's Virtual Holland (see inset above and screenshot below).

Here's a banks in Second Life timeline:

Sep. 2005: Wells Fargo is the first real-world bank with a presence in Second Life (SL)
Dec. 2005: Wells Fargo leaves SL, moving its Stagecoach Island to a new platform (see previous coverage here)
7 Dec 2006: ABN Amro becomes first European bank in SL (press release here)
7 Jan 2007: BNP Paribas opens a small test area (post here)
7 Feb 2007: Swiss bank BCV opens its doors in SL (press release here)
21 Feb 2007: ING Bank launches website and blog to get users involved in building what it calls Our Virtual Holland <ourvirtualholland.nl>
2 Mar 2007: Danish Saxo Bank announces plans to create trading platform in SL (Reuters article here)

Analysis
It's hard to predict whether banking will ultimately become a transactional business in Second Life or other virtual realities (note 1). However, with four million registered users and an inordinate amount of press attention, leveraging a Second Life presence for marketing purposes looks to be a winner.

But if you are going into SL, make sure you mirror the effort with a Web presence that lets the other 1 billion Internet users see what you are up to. And there is no one doing that better than ING, who's taken a Zen approach to its SL strategy. They've made the process of building a SL presence more important than the actual result. Their Web 2.0-inspired website ourvirtualholland.nl involves the community with blogs, suggestions, and an email list (see screenshot below).

Note

1. For the record, we believe that full banking capabilities, including transactions, lending, currency exchange, will eventually be conducted in virtual communities such as Second Life. Whether it will ever be more than just a niche play, is unknown.

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ING Direct’s Electric Orange Launched to General Public

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 8, 2007
Categories: Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, ING Direct, Search Engine Marketing

I don't know how I missed this yesterday. The Bank Deals blog, which routinely gets this stuff first, was the first to note that ING Direct's much-discussed new paperless checking account is now visible on its website (see below). The full launch follows a 4-month invitation-only period (see our previous coverage here).

However, the account is not currently running on the homepage, which tonight was rotating through three product offers:

4.5% Orange Savings
6.0% Orange Mortgage
Orange retirement accounts: Traditional and Roth IRAs

ING Direct, along with Everbank, are currently running ads on Google for "electric orange" and "electric orange ING Direct" (see inset). The landing page, shown below, includes a Jane Kim Wall Street Journal clipping. Interestingly, the ING Direct landing page still says you must first open a savings account to qualify for the checking account. The Website carries no such restriction.

We'll have more info on the account as we run it through its paces.

ING Direct product page

ING Direct landing page from Google AdWords ad

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US Bank’s Over-Zealous Login Lockout

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 8, 2007
Categories: Security & Privacy, US Bank

Looking for the ultimate in frustration? Try this sometime. Go to all of your bank, brokerage and credit card accounts and enter the correct username, then make up passwords and hit enter until you are locked out of your account.

For research on a previous report in our Online Banking Report (here), I locked myself out of more than a dozen accounts. That was almost four years ago, and I have no plans to do that again, ever. However, yesterday, through a bit of miscommunication with my wife (note 1), we found ourselves locked out of our account at US Bank.

Due to this inadvertent bit of research, I found out that US Bank has added a "lock-out alert" (one step forward) to its messaging services, but fails to tell users what is going on and how to resolve it (two steps backwards). Here's what the alert looks like (see notes 2 & 3):

Recommendations:

The alert (above) needs to tell users EXACTLY what to do next. US Bank correctly tells the 1% of users what to do if the failed login was not imitated by them (call the bank), but the bank fails to explain to the other 99%, who simply forgot their password, what they should do.
The screen displayed after lockout (see below) also must tell users EXACTLY what to do. US Bank's message to frustrated users: "Internet Banking is unable to verify the information you've entered. Please confirm your Personal ID and password." At the very least the bank should empathize with the user and explain the possible causes of the problem and link them to the password reset screen.
Don't lock out users after only three or four attempts: US Bank locked my wife out after 3 or 4 trys, more stringent that the six allowed in our test four years ago. That is just too few. Most users who make a mistake (attempt 1), will retype the exact same info (attempt 2), then try once more paying very close attention to their typing (attempt 3), before trying a different password (attempt 4). So at minimum you must allow four tries. Even better is 5 or 6 or up to ten. The cost in customer service for locking out at 3 or 4 attempts is far more than any fraud that will be prevented with such strict measures.
Help users remember they created a new password: In our case, if the on-screen error message had said, "You recently changed your password, are you using the new one?", the whole episode could have been avoided. Instead, US Bank gives no information to its customers (see screenshot below). It doesn't even explicitly tell them they entered the wrong username/password. It just drops them onto this blank page that has a vague message about logging in.
Warn users before lockout: Tell users they are about to be locked out, with a warning, "One more incorrect attempt will lock you out of your account. If you've forgotten your username or password, click here."
Let users back in after lockout: The last time we tested, US Bank allowed users to log back in 24 hours after lockout if they remember their username and password (note 4). That's a good policy, but why 24 hours? Why not 12 hours, or 3 hours, or 1. If you have the correct username and password, why should you not be allowed back into your account after a relatively short period of time?

Enough with the rant. I know these policies are in place to discourage unauthorized entry. But you also shouldn't run up your customer service costs, not to mention irritating customers, with arbitrary lockout parameters.

Notes:

1. Anyone with a joint checking account can probably recognize that "a bit of a miscommunication," is a euphemism for, "I forgot to tell her I changed the password."

2. An alert is generated for each failed attempt. We receive three identical messages. The email address has been erased from the screenshot.

3. Note the email is generated from the URL, cs.usbank-email.com, which cannot be verified through direct navigation (it results in an error message). That's phishy looking. Emails should carry the normal, user-recognizable URL, in this case, usbank.com. If that's not practical, at least post a page at the email URL verifying that the URL is genuine.

4. It's been about 16 hours since lockout, and we still cannot get back into the account.

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Social Lending Pioneer Zopa Celebrates Second Birthday

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 7, 2007
Categories: Bank 2.0, Loans & Credit, Prosper, Zopa

The nascent market of online social or person-to-person (P2P) lending turned two as its pioneer, UK-based Zopa, celebrated its second birthday today. In addition to slapping a this enormous "2" button on its homepage (see screenshot below), the company marked the occasion with an open house at its headquarters, an online lunch-time webcast, and an online giveaway of ten iPod shuffles (see the text of the email message sent to Zopa lenders and borrowers here).

The Latest Numbers out of Zopa

According to Easier Finance (thanks to PaymentsNews for the link):

Zopa has 135,000 members
Zopa lenders have received on average 6.75% before-tax annual return after fees and defaults
Zopa borrowers have obtained loans at rates as low as 4.2% APR
The current default rate is only 20 basis points, 0.2%

Zopa continues to create a considerable buzz in the UK. The company's homepage links to 42 articles from a diverse range of publications, most recently The Sunday Times and The Daily Mirror. And my favorite, an awesome piece from the UK's public-service Channel 4, that is unlike anything I've ever seen on U.S. news (click the play button below).

The YouTube replay of the 4-minute feature was posted to Zopa's blog March 1 along with TV clips from CNBC and Fresno, CA news. The Channel 4 piece covers the topic of "social lending" in general and primarily covers Zopa, but near the end, another UK alternative lender is interviewed, Fair Finance <fairfinance.co.uk> is interviewed. We'll look at Fair Finance in a separate post.

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NetBankerJobs Launches with Special Offer

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 6, 2007
Categories: Jobs

In our continuing quest to be a valued resource for the online finance and banking industries, we've launched a job board at NetBanker.com, called what else, NetBankerJobs.com. There are many career resources available online, but ours is the only one targeting the thousands of online financial services professionals and execs who read and subscribe to the NetBanker blog.

The board's technology has been outsourced to SimplyHired (see note 2), a Web 2.0-inspired jobs site that allows us to show both openings that our customers have posted directly and those originated elsewhere.

However, there is a key difference. Jobs posted through our board will stay on top of the other listings for 31 days. For example, the CashEdge listing for a new Director of Financial Technology Sales on the top of the screenshot above was added directly via NetBankerJobs.com and the others titled, "Job Postings form the Web" were supplied by SimplyHired (see note 1). We also include NetBanker-submitted job listing on the NetBanker homepage via a link in the "Hot Jobs" area in the right-hand column.

Glenbrook Partners recently launched a similar board targeted to payments professionals at PaymentsJobs.com. In the screenshot right, you can see the postings at the top from Pay By Touch, WaMU, PayPal and Google that originated at PaymentsJobs.com (click on inset right for closeup).

By advertising at NetBankerJobs, you will reach thousands of targeted potential applicants via NetBanker.com. Plus, the first few jobs posted will receive a dedicated article in the blog, which means your job posting will be sent to over 5,000 NetBanker readers either via email or RSS. And the job posting will be visible in the NetBanker blog archives under the category "jobs" for as long as the position remains open.

The cost for this unique exposure: just $295 for 31 days. So post your online banking or finance job today at NetBankerJobs and hire great talent tomorrow.

Questions? Contact us at jobs@netbanker.com or 206.517.5021

Note:

1. The CashEdge listing was used as a test post with permission. The job opening is real, but CashEdge did not purchase the listing.

2. Revenue is split between evenly between SimplyHired and NetBanker.

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Is There Anything Left to Phish? Fake Wells Fargo Credit Card Authorization Notification

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 6, 2007
Categories: Phishing, RSS, Security & Privacy

I hate phishing. Not only has it cost the world's financial institutions tens of millions in fraud losses, it's just about killed the email channel in terms of getting your customer's attention in a timely fashion, and it's diverted management's attention from much-needed online marketing improvements. That's much worse than the actual fraud losses.

Like most people with widely published email addresses, I get a half-dozen phishing messages every day (note 1). I rarely give them a second look unless they purport to be from my bank. Almost all of them are placed in the junk folder by Outlook, one of the nicer services of Microsoft Office.

Phishers have to be much more creative these days. The time has past when a few paragraphs of broken English and the bank's logo could net the fraudsters a few extra coins. Now I get fake emails asking me to verify my security settings, authorize account changes, or claim a sweepstakes prize.

For example, today I received a fake credit card authorization request from Wells Fargo (see inset). I'm not sure why it prompted a blog entry. Maybe because I use a Wells card or maybe because I've been talking to mobile banking execs about this very subject. But the fake was good enough to force me to take a closer look. The biggest clue is the wrong format for the USD charge, using a "comma" instead of a decimal point between the dollars and sense. But otherwise it's pretty good, and may even net a few card numbers before its taken down.

Analysis
I am optimistic that email can still be effective if financial institutions clearly personalize their messages (see samples here and here). However, gaining customer trust back, especially for security-related messages, is a long-term project. That's why we are telling financial institutions to invest in RSS/XML feeds (Online Banking Report #135/136) and/or mobile banking (Online Banking Report #138/139) in order to reach their customers in a way that is less prone to fraud, at least for now.

Notes:

1. A great online repository of phishing examples is housed at MillerSmiles.co.uk

2. There's a whole book on phishing, click on cover above to go to Amazon's description of the title.

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In 2006, 86% of credit card direct mail included online options

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 5, 2007
Categories: American Express, Bank of America, Capital One Financial Corp., Chase Bank, Citibank, Credit/Debit Cards, Metrics & Market Research

Advertising-monitoring firm, Mintel Comperemedia reported last week that nearly 9 out of 10 credit card solicitations in 2006 directed recipients to the Web, up sharply from 56% in 2003 (see note 1, 2). Several big mailers, namely American Express, still seem reluctant to use website response as an option, at least in the mailers we see at our house.

American Express tests must show a drop in response by offering too many choices. But if you don't have the budget of American Express, which can afford to drop a mail piece in every credit-worthy household every two or three weeks, you should add website options to your direct mail creative. That way, you can at least capture a lead at your website, even if they don't ultimately accept your credit offer.

Total mailing volume for 2006 was 9.2 billion pieces (see note 1), or about 3 per week per credit-worthy household. Two of those were from the five largest mailers listed below which accounted for more than 60% of the volume, according to Comperemedia. JPMorgan Chase accounted for 18% on its own.

In another data slice from Comperemedia, cited by Capital One in a Feb. 2006 investor presentation (PDF here), response rates have fallen from 1.4% in 1995 to 0.3% in 2004 (see note 3).

Here's a breakdown of the billion-piece club, and their percent change compared to 2005:

1. Chase >>> 1.7 billion (down 4%)

2. Capital One >>> 1.2 billion (up 13%)

3. American Express >>> 1 billion

4. Citibank >>> 980 million (down 2%)

5. Bank of America/MBNA >>> 920 million (down 17%)

Other top-10 mailers: HSBC (up 25%); Discover (up 29%); Barclays Bank (190 million, up 70%)

Note:

1. Comperemedia tracks mailing volume for more than 150 large financial institutions. So the figures here do not include mailings from thousands of smaller banks and credit unions. In total, those probably account for less than 5% of the total from the top-150.

2. Comperemedia press release is here. Interview of Comperemedia director Jenny Roock by MediaPost is here.

3. Credit card response rate slide from Capital One's investor presentation (PDF) at the Debt & Equity Conference, Feb. 2006; data from Comperemedia.

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Citibank Mobile Banking Delayed Until April

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 2, 2007
Categories: Citibank, Credit/Debit Cards, Mobile Banking, Mobile Payments

In a multi-page look at mobile banking (here), BankRate.com reporter Laura Bruce quotes Citibank's Rob Julavits as saying the bank will be:

…testing (mobile banking) in March and allowing customers to enroll in April, with a broad launch expected before midyear

That's a few months later than originally expected. The bank sent Citi Mobile disclosures to checking account customers in January indicating the service would be live in February (see article here). Citibank already provides mobile access to its credit cards in Japan (link here).

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Safe Credit Union’s Clever Homepage Rate Comparison

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 2, 2007
Categories: Safe CU, Website Usability & Design

How do you compete with Bank of America, WaMU, and the other majors that saturate the market with fancy branches and large ATM networks backed by nine-figure marketing budgets? Increasingly, financial institutions are taking the battle to the Web, where a community bank or credit union can build an equally impressive website, gain the attention of prospective customers, and tell their story.

An important part of that story is the rate advantage, especially when major banks continue to pay nearly zero interest on balances under $5,000 in standard checking and savings accounts. But few institutions actually show direct competitive comparisons, and when they do, they are usually buried three or four screens off the homepage.

Not so at Sacramento-based Safe Credit Union <safecu.org>. The 120,000 member CU posts its rates on the upper-right side of its homepage (see screenshot below). And each product includes a one-click rate comparison to the right of the APY (see above right). Users can select rate comparison on a $1, $2000, or $10,000 checking account balance.

Clicking Compare causes the box to expand within the home page to show a numerical and graphical comparison to three key competitors, BofA, WaMU, and Wells Fargo (see lower right).

This is a great way to showcase your rate advantage, while not overly cluttering your homepage. Along with the Progressive Insurance comparison "ticker" (here), this is the one of the best rate comparison tactics we've ever seen.

Deposit rates are provided by Market Rates Insight, a long-time provider of deposit rates to more than 1,000 U.S. financial institutions.

Note: The Safe Credit Union homepage is currently running a clever flash-based promo comparing the toaster you get with "their checking" to the chance you could win a LCD television with a Safe account (screenshot taken, 2 March 2007, 10 AM Pacific).

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Quicken Loans Develops a Google Gadget; Pageview Counts Released by Google

By Jim Bruene Posted on March 1, 2007
Categories: Google, Quicken Loans

On Tuesday, Google began publishing usage information for its popular gadgets here. That's Google's name for widgets that can be imbedded on personal start pages including, but not limited to, the personalized version of Google's homepage at <google.com/ig> or PC desktops running Google desktop.

For example, I have three Google gadgets running on my XP laptop, a snow globe displaying the crummy Seattle weather conditions and forecast, a Weatherbug widget showing the conditions where I'd rather be, and a calculator (click on inset for a closeup).

Listed below are the most-popular gadgets last week (note 1) and their approximate pageviews (note 2). The only one related to financial services was a currency converter, which surprisingly was the 19th most popular gadget, with an estimated 2.8 million views last week. In addition, two other currency converters had another 1.1 million page views, bringing the category to just shy of 4 million. Use this list to generate ideas on non-financial content that could be added to your website to increase its appeal.

In the Finance category, only 10 English-language gadgets had more than 100,000 pageviews. After currency conversion, the two biggest were a stock tracker with 900,000 and a loan calculator with 500,000 (see Table 2, below).

Analysis
The growing popularity of gadgets and widgets provides an opportunity for financial institutions to develop branded gadgets for various functions, such as monitoring rates, calculating exchange rates, and tracking stock and commodity indexes (for more info, see note 1). We looked at several widgets last year including the Mortgagebot-produced mortgage rate tracker and the Mac-only bill pay tracking widget from billQ (see previous coverage here).

Most of the gadgets at Google were developed by outsiders. In its instructions to developers, the company claims you could write a gadget in five minutes (see instructions here). Even if it took five days, the payoff could be impressive. For example, the only financial brand with a Google gadget is Quicken Loans <quickenloans.com> which posted an attractive rate tracker and payment calculator (see inset). Although its gadget had only 7,000 pageviews last week, that's still 350,000 annualized. An impressive return for a trivial programming expense.

Table 1: Most popular Google Gadgets across all categories

More than 100 million
131 million >>> Date & Time (only "default" gadget on Google's personalized start page)

More than 10 million
39 million >>>> Driving directions
27 million >>>> Daily horoscopes
27 million >>>> Wikipedia
14 million >>>> Word of the day
13 million >>>> Dictionary.com

More than 5 million
9.5 million >>> Search YouTube
8.9 million >>> Current moon phase
8.1 million >>> PacMan v2.0
6.2 million >>> NASA image of the day
5.5 million >>> Babelfish

More than 2 million
4.9 million >>> Google Maps
4.5 million >>> Free Sudoku puzzles
3.6 million >>> Art of the Day
3.4 million >>> Bible verse of the day
3.2 million >>> DIGG viewer (posted by Digg.com)
3.0 million >>> Simple calc
2.9 million >>> World clocks
2.8 million >>> Currency converter
2.7 million >>> IP address lookup
2.6 million >>> Hangman (word game)
2.4 million >>> National Geographic photo of the day
2.4 million >>> Calendar
2.2 million >>> My webcam
2.1 million >>> Famous optical illusions
2.1 million >>> Countdown

More than 1 million
1.9 million >>> Crossword of the day
1.9 million >>> Free text messages
1.7 million >>> Interesting photos of the day
1.6 million >>> A joke a day
1.6 million >>> To do
1.6 million >>> Local NWS radar
1.5 million >>> Google docs and spreadsheets
1.5 million >>> This day in history
1.4 million >>> Mighty optical illusions
1.4 million >>> Romantic quote of the day
1.4 million >>> Your daily horoscope
1.3 million >>> Local gas prices
1.3 million >>> Search eBay
1.3 million >>> Spellcheck
1.2 million >>> Brain teasers
1.2 million >>> US Traffic info
1.2 million >>> My Google groups
1.1 million >>> Weather by Weather.com
1.1 million >>> My IP
1.1 million >>> Today in history
1.1 million >>> Terror alert level
1.1 million >>> Braingle – daily brain teaser
1.0 million >>> Frogger
1.0 million >>> Yahoo mail

Table 2: Most popular Google gadgets in the Finance category

2.8 million >>> Currency converter (pixelmedia.nl)
910,000 >>> Stock portfolio
800,000 >>> Currency converter (donalobrien.net)
500,000 >>> Loan calculator
300,000 >>> Stockchart
270,000 >>> Currency converter (ac-markets.com)
210,000 >>> Crude oil watch
160,000 >>> Bombay stock exchange
120,000 >>> Mortgage rate watch
110,000 >>> Live gold

—————————–
Source: Online Banking Report search at Google, 1 March 2007

Notes:

1. We looked at traffic levels of the first 264 gadgets listed under "popular" at Google's gadget directory: http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open&source=gpvl&num=24&cat=finance

2. Google's explanation of the pageview count:

Gadget pageview statistics are approximate only– for precise statistics, we recommend the use of Google Analytics inside your gadgets. Gadget pageviews represent the number of times that the gadget was rendered, including Google Personalized Homepage, Google Pages, Blogger, Google Desktop, and across thousands of independent pages around the web.

3. For more information on the broader subject of delivering financial services direct to the user's desktop, see our Online Banking Report #85, Grabbing Desktop Mindshare, which is a bit outdated, published in 2002, but still worth a look.

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Bank of America Opens One New Checking Account per Branch per Day

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 28, 2007
Categories: Bank of America, Channel Integration, Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, Metrics & Market Research, Washington Mutual

The folks at BAI, using research by Raddon Financial, ran the numbers on new checking account sales per branch and found that Bank of America is opening 31 new checking accounts per branch per month, or just about one per day (article here). WaMu did better with 39 per month or 1.3/day. The article said community banks typically get only about one-fifth that, just 2 new checking accounts per week per branch.

I'm not sure exactly what those numbers mean, but someday in a meeting when you are trying to make a case for new investment in your website, you can counter the, "but customers love the branches" with, "sure they do, but even BofA, who spends more than $200 million/year advertising, only manages to sell one checking account per day per branch" (see top 2005 advertisers here). It still might not mean anything, but it makes it sound like you've done your homework.

The problem with comparing branch-account openings to online-account openings is they are not separate ecosystems. Would the account have been opened online without a nearby branch? Or did that account, opened at the branch, come as a result of research conducted online by the customer? In the U.S., you need both channels for the foreseeable future, unless you sell a financial product that doesn't need physical support, like a savings account (see note 1).

Another wild card: How do you gauge the impact of increasingly prominent website offers like this one currently running on the checking account page at <bankofamerica.com> (see note 2)? Naturally, to get the $50 you have to open the account online.

Notes:

1. For more information on the future of the online channel vs. branch, see our report, The Demise of the Branch, published spring 2006 in Online Banking Report (OBR 128).

2. The offer was presented to a non-customer browsing the main Bank of America site from a Seattle IP address and indicating their state of residence was Nevada.

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Finovate Blog

Author: Jim Bruene

Back Story: Wall Street Journal’s Article on Online Financial Planning Tools from Banks

Futuristic Friday: Banks in Second Life

ING Direct’s Electric Orange Launched to General Public

US Bank’s Over-Zealous Login Lockout

Social Lending Pioneer Zopa Celebrates Second Birthday

NetBankerJobs Launches with Special Offer

Is There Anything Left to Phish? Fake Wells Fargo Credit Card Authorization Notification

In 2006, 86% of credit card direct mail included online options

Citibank Mobile Banking Delayed Until April

Safe Credit Union’s Clever Homepage Rate Comparison

Quicken Loans Develops a Google Gadget; Pageview Counts Released by Google

Bank of America Opens One New Checking Account per Branch per Day