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Thanks to our February 2010 NetBanker Sponsors

By Eric Mattson Posted on February 17, 2010
Categories: About Netbanker

We’d like to take moment away from obsessively watching the Winter Olympics in Vancouver (Go USA!) to express our thanks to the sponsors that help keep NetBanker’s high-quality content free for you.

Please support our sponsors (listed below in alphabetical order) so that they continue to support NetBanker:

IntelliResponse — Get a complimentary whitepaper on how self-service via the mobile channel can improve your customer service and benefit your business.

Wesabe — Promoting their new Springboard product — a white-label version of their personal finance capabilities and community for financial institutions. Take a look!

Worklight — Check out this new demo of how Worklight helps businesses securely engage their customers via widgets, social networks, iPhone apps and other consumer tools.

Yodlee — Sign up for a free webinar on March 10th from Yodlee about their PFM solution and receive a complimentary copy of a new Aite report on “PFM: Platform For Customer Engagement”.

Now, back to the blogging.

P.S. If you’d like to join these companies in supporting NetBanker, please drop me an email at eric@netbanker.com.

Eric Mattson is CEO of Online Financial Innovations, the parent company of NetBanker, Online Banking Report and the Finovate Conference Series. He can be reached at eric@netbanker.com.

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Bank of America Finally Forces Username Change, No More Social Security Numbers

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 16, 2010
Categories: Bank of America, Security & Privacy

When I first started banking online with Bank of America, ten or more years ago, no choice in username existed: it was set to your Social Security Number (SSN). But that was back in the days before hackers had become proficient in stealing usernames.

While I’ve been advised to change the username a few times over the years, the bank finally laid down the law in January. I had two more logins available with my SSN, and then I was required to change. The message was delivered via splash screen after login (see #1 below).

The process was simple and took just a few seconds (screenshot #2). The bank’s interactive script helps users make good username/password choices (screenshots #3-4).

While this change isn’t likely to do anything to help the bank’s bottom line (it probably just drives up tech support calls as users adjust to their new usernames), it’s the right thing to do. Helping customers protect their own privacy should be part of every financial institution’s mission.

#1: Bank of America splash screen at login (13 Feb. 2010)

#2 Landing page after choosing “update” button above

#3 Interactive help for creating an allowed username

#4 Confirmation when all is well

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Amplify Credit Union Ready for Valentine’s Day

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 12, 2010
Categories: Advertising & Promotion, Amplify

If you’ve read Netbanker for awhile, you already know that I’m a little obsessed about the lack of imagination most financial institutions display when it comes to dressing up their websites for major holidays.

It’s not that big a deal, but still, unless you are purposefully trying to project an image from the late 1990s (maybe not such a bad idea for many banks, given the current backlash), you might consider investing in a few graphical tweaks to keep up with other Internet retailers (see our Dec. 24 post).

Today, while looking for mobile banking examples, I happened across Amplify Credit Union, one of my favorite examples of financial marketing. They didn’t have mobile on the homepage, but they were sure decked out for Valentine’s Day, which is just 48 hours away.

The CU not only swapped out their normal background graphic on its homepage, but also sweetened its logo with a heart, ala Google, and changed its tagline:

From: Bank Less. Live more.

To: Bank less. Love more.

These are three alterations I’ve not seen from a financial institution. In addition, the Valentine’s theme was carried out with:

Red shading to the sides of the page, providing a very professional finish
A “share the love” promotion for the CU’s $25 refer-a-friend promo

Overall, it’s very clever and supports the credit union’s innovative brand image.

Amplify CU altered its homepage and logo for Valentine’s Day (12 Feb. 2010)
Note: Pause button in upper-right keeps the promotion from automatically cycling to the next one.

Share the Love landing page (link)

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Numbers in the News: P2P Payments Usage at First General Credit Union

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 11, 2010
Categories: Bill payment, iPay Technologies, Metrics & Market Research, P2P Payments

It’s always difficult to gauge actual consumer demand for new services. Traditional market research, while providing some broad intent data (e.g., “yeah, that sounds like something I might buy“), doesn’t really do a very good job in telling you whether real customers will use the service. The problem is that in the real world, customers have real concerns about new products and most are unwilling to spend very much time learning about them.

So it’s always great to find financial institutions willing to share usage data on their online or mobile services. This week, First General Credit Union wins our undying gratitude (and a free subscription to Netbanker) by revealing its person-to-person payments numbers in the latest issue of Credit Union Journal.

The CU uses iPay Technologies P2P payment service which is provided at no-cost to its deluxe bill-payment clients. Keep in mind, this is a small $44 million credit union serving 5,000 members, so the raw numbers aren’t large but the percentages are interesting:

Number of online banking users: 500 (10% of members)

Number of bill-pay users: 200 (40% of online banking users)

Number of P2P payment users: 3 (1.5% of bill-pay users,
0.6% of online banking users)

Analysis: The credit union says it hasn’t promoted the P2P feature, which is offered free of charge. It’s not even mentioned on its website, except on slide 22 of its online demo. So this isn’t a representative sample for a financial institution looking to drive usage to the product. However, a 2% penetration (of online/mobile customers) is along the lines of what we expect this year nationwide. Longer-term, we expect usage to grow at least 10-fold from that level (see note below).

Note: For more information on P2P payments including a 15-year usage forecast, see our recent Online Banking Report: Making the Case for P2P Payments (published Dec. 2009).

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Launches: Kwedit Allows Gamers to Pay for Virtual Goods with Real Credit

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 4, 2010
Categories: Alt Payments, Launches, Youth market

From a financial innovations standpoint, 2010 is off to a great start. Just 35 days into the year and we’ve already had two launches of services I don’t think anyone saw coming: Blippy to automatically stream your purchases to the world (previous post) and now Kwedit (say it out loud if you don’t get it).

Kwedit is designed to be the payments engine for the massive virtual goods market, estimated to be $1.6 billion in 2010 according to InsideVirtualGoods.com, up from $1 billion in 2009 (cited by GamesBeat last week).

Many of the gaming networks, especially the so-called “social gaming” startups such as Zynga’s FarmVille, appeal to teenagers and younger kids (note 1) who don’t have credit or debit cards available to pay for virtual goods. This has made it difficult for the publishers to monetize the games through direct payments.

How it works:

1. Users of games partnering with Kwedit can purchase in-game virtual goods by promising to pay later through their associated Kwedit account. See the screenshot below to see how Kwedit is positioned in the online game FooPets.

2. Later, users print out a bar-coded coupon from their Kwedit account (see inset right) and take it to a participating 7-11 convenience store and pay via cash, mail payment directly to Kwedit, or “pass the duck” and send the IOU direct to their parents for payment. The site also offers an option to pay directly via credit or debit card.

3. To help drive off deadbeats, the company has created a Kwedit Score that shows which users are paying their IOUs on time (inset left). At FooPets, users will get more virtual goodies as their Kwedit Score increases, creating a game within the game and a way to promote responsible spending.

Analysis
I’m not a gamer myself, but as a parent, I understand the pull of online games and look forward to the day when I don’t have to hand over my credit card for use on some site I barely understand. Some will argue that Kwedit needlessly encourages credit use in the pre-teen set (note 1). But as long as parents stay involved, Kwedit can actually be used to teach kids the importance of paying their bills.

So, if users take this option seriously, by paying down their virtual debt with real money, Kwedit could be huge (in which case, PayPal buys it of course). And it’s relatively low risk for the gaming companies because the virtual goods have a zero marginal cost. BillMyParents is another company we’ve covered in the teen-payments space.

There is no doubt in my mind that online gaming needs a better payment system and that the solution is unlikely to resemble anything us parents have ever seen or imagined. Kwedit fits that bill.

Kwedit gets star billing on the main screen at FooPets (4 Feb 2010)

Users create a promise to pay using a popup screen served by Kwedit (link)
Note: Users first must log in to their Kwedit account from this popup

Notes:
1. Kwedit users must be 13 or older to sign up for an account.

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Out of the Inbox: Citibank Offers to Help Users Restart their Online Banking

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 3, 2010
Categories: Citibank, Email Samples, Security & Privacy

My Citibank checking account dates back to when iPods were novel and 1GB was enough to satisfy your iTunes cravings (see Jan. 2005 post). For several years, Citibank gave iPods away to anyone who’d open up a checking account online and do a few bill payments.

I haven’t accessed my Citi checking account in at least a year, because last time I tried, I locked myself out with too many password attempts (note 1). And I’ve been too lazy to go through the often tedious reset process (see below).

So I was pleased to receive an email this morning offering to help me get restarted (see screenshot below). I figured the bank had noted my previously futile attempts to login and was sending along a bit of digital assistance. Sure, it was a year or two after the fact, but I believe in better late than never.

But the main call to action in the activation email is:

Enter the User ID and Password you created when you opened your account online.

So evidently, the bank thinks I’m smarter than I really am and actually can remember the username/password from my two-years dormant account.

Had I not been blogging about the email, I would have deleted it. But as I re-read it more closely, I did see the small light-gray link in the corner for resetting my password. Unfortunately, Citi requires your ATM card and PIN to reset passwords (see second screenshot). This is precisely why I wasn’t able to reset the thing when I was locked out two years ago.

My take:
1. An activation to stalled online banking customers is a great idea. But in this case, Citibank did not deliver on its promise to “help” me restart online banking (note 2). As a matter of fact, I am now even more frustrated. If you are going to send a message offering help, make sure there is actual help available for the various ways customers will respond.
2. For infrequent users, consider simpler password-reset procedures based on email address or mobile phone number on file plus Social Security Number and/or shared secrets.
3. Finally, don’t offer a dead-end password reset page. In Citibank’s case, if the user doesn’t have both their ATM card number and PIN, there is no place to turn. There’s not even a phone number listed on the page to seek live help (you have to use Contact Us in the upper right).

Citibank email (sent 3 Feb. 2010, 9:30 AM Pacific)

Citibank password-reset page

Note:
1. I have two Citi accounts with different usernames and passwords, so it always makes for an interesting memory test at login.
2. I should add that I have enough money in the non-interest account to provide Citi with a bit of profit every year.

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Thanks to Yodlee, a long-term NetBanker.com sponsor

By Eric Mattson Posted on February 3, 2010
Categories: About Netbanker

Happy February! We hope your 2010 is off to a strong start.

As we ramp up our blogging for the new year, we wanted to take a moment to thank Yodlee for their continued support of NetBanker. They sponsored the blog for several months in 2009 and recently made a long-term commitment to support it in 2010.

Yodlee is, in their own words, a “provider of online and mobile personal financial management (PFM) and payments solutions”. They’re one of the leaders in the space with “more than 100 leading financial institutions and portals today offer
Yodlee-powered solutions to millions of customers worldwide.”

On February 9th (next Tuesday), Yodlee is offering a free webinar on their AccountVerification tools and how they can help financial institutions increase deposits and decrease abandonment. Register now if you’re interested in learning more!

Thanks for your time! Now, back to our usual blogging.

Eric Mattson is CEO of Online Financial Innovations, the parent company of NetBanker, Online Banking Report and the Finovate Conference Series. He can be reached at eric@netbanker.com.

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Trusteer Quantifies the Biggest Online Banking Security Weakness: The End User

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 2, 2010
Categories: Market Research & Metrics, Security & Privacy, Trusteer

I’ve often wondered how many people use the same username/passwords at their bank as they do at other random websites. I figured it was a substantial number, but never expected it to be as high as the 73% Trusteer cited in a recent white paper (note 1). That’s why most financial institutions have used “multi-factor authentication” for years.

One of the most common multi-factor techniques is to ask additional questions if the bank detects a login from an unknown computer. However, it’s possible that these same people are also using the same “secret question” answers at non-secure websites, defeating this multi-factor approach.

Luckily, it’s still relatively difficult to remove money from most U.S. consumer accounts because online interbank transfers are more tightly controlled, or simply not offered. However, if crooks are able to log in to online/mobile banking and determine the user’s account numbers (debit, credit, or checking), a number of more lucrative frauds can be engineered.

What’s a bank to do:

Use secret questions that are not commonly used across the Web. Or allow users to create their own, but caution them not to use ones they see at other non-banking websites.
Create an additional out-of-band authentication process (e.g., text message an approval code) for moving funds out of an account.
Do not allow online banking users to see their own account numbers online
(note 3)
Educate/encourage customers to use different username/password for online banking than for other non-financial sites
Financial institutions using Trusteer’s Rapport service can identify which customers are sharing username/passwords at less-secure sites and ratchet up internal fraud control settings for these customers

And the most effective method, which we don’t recommend because it’s just too painful for the user experience:

Force users to make more challenging usernames and/or password such as those with a capital letter, number and/or special character

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) offers Trusteer’s Rapport (link, 2 Feb. 2010)

Notes:
1. While 73% shared banking passwords with other sites, less than half the total, 47%, shared BOTH username and password. Two other data points:
– 65% of user-selected banking usernames were used elsewhere
– 42% of bank-selected banking usernames were used elsewhere
2. Trusteer’s data was compiled over 12 months using its plugin software running on more than 4 million computers (see previous post).
3. There’s still the issue of the easy-to-read account number on check images; it would be nice to mask it, but that’s probably not worth the expense)
4. For more info on Trusteer and other security topics, see our previous reports such as, Online Banking Report: New Security Techniques (Sep. 2008)

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Citibank, Microsoft Join Forces with Bundle, a Personal Finance Site with a Data Bent

By Jim Bruene Posted on January 29, 2010
Categories: Citibank, iPhone, Launches, Microsoft, Personal Financial Management

I had been intrigued about rumors that Microsoft and Citibank were partnering on a joint personal-finance venture called Bundle. I was hoping for the financial services version of an Apple launch.

OK, that’s a little too high of a bar to set. I was really just hoping for the next Mint or at least something we hadn’t seen before. To some extent, Bundle delivered, with Mint-like attention to design and deeper data than we’ve seen previously. But in other ways it’s just a me-too personal finance site, FiLife 2.0. Bottom line, Bundle has been open only a week so it’s way too early to predict where it’s going or how it makes money.

Bundle is a personal finance startup backed by Citibank, Microsoft, and Morningstar. Two of the key execs, including CEO Jaidev Shergill, are from Citi Growth Ventures, the group charged with commercializing products and ideas that have bubbled up within the banking giant. The startup also enlisted professional journalists, including Janet Paskin who’s written for Dow Jones’s SmartMoney Magazine among others.

Given that pedigree, the new site is kind of a SmartMoney Magazine meets your credit card statement with some social networking thrown in the mix.

What distinguishes it from most personal finance content providers is that Bundle showcases proprietary data, sourced from Citibank’s massive card-spending warehouse. The site gives center stage to data and shows household spending personalized to your specific location.

There’s also professional personal finance advice mixed with stories and comment from the community. Even the articles use the database to illustrate points (screenshot 3).

Naturally, it’s well-integrated to Facebook. You cannot even comment unless you log in via Facebook Connect. You can follow Bundle on Twitter, of course, but surprisingly there is no blog or RSS feed.

And Bundle already has its own iPhone app called Vice Tracker (iTunes link) that makes shopping for non-essentials into a tongue-in-cheek game. The unique app was added to the store two weeks ago in the Lifestyle category.

According to the FAQs, Bundle’s business model is advertising, but there are no ads on the site yet, other than the logos of the backers (Microsoft is using its MSN Money brand). Presumably, they are looking for financial advertisers, but the Citibank connection might make that a harder sell.

Analysis
I like what Bundle is doing, creating a consumer-facing company around Citibank’s cardholder data. But I can’t figure out who they are targeting. Maybe they haven’t decided yet.

If they want to attract data junkies like myself, the data needs to be more transparent and they need more robust tools to play with it. I enjoyed being able to compare the spending of my Seattle neighbors against that of my home town in Iowa (it’s surprisingly similar). But I was left with a number of questions:

Where does the spending data come from? The FAQs are vague on saying that it comes from Citibank card data, government sources and “other third parties.”
If it’s primarily Citibank card data, is it really representative of the entire town or just the people that hold Citibank cards? For example, Bundle tells me (screenshot #3) that the average dining out expense in Seattle is $115 and the most common spot is Starbucks followed by McDonalds. Something seems wrong with that.
And furthermore, are these estimates of all spending or just that on Citibank cards? And which Citi portfolios are included? What about business cards?
The graphical bubbles are nice, but I like to view data in tables, especially when trying to drill down and do meaningful analysis. Is there some way to see the underlying numbers?

On the other hand, if Bundle is trying to attract readers looking for personal finance advice and discussion, the data is kind of in the way, more window dressing than anything else.

Final thoughts
The graphics are great and the spending data is interesting. But why would I come back? There’s only so many times in one’s life that you want to compare the shopping habits of your city vs. somewhere else.

Presumably, future versions will allow you to compare your actual spending to the Bundle averages using account-aggregation technology. This is a popular feature of Wesabe, and is one of the major tenets of what we’ve called “social personal finance” (note 1, 2).

I also expect they’ll integrate Bundle into the Citibank cardholder site so its customers can do online comparisons while they are checking their statement online. If Citi can document a spending lift from bundled Bundle, then the startup has proven its value. Armed with that success, it could be licensed to other big card issuers, increasing the value of the Bundle data for all users, attracting more users and more advertisers. The network effect. Perhaps that’s the end game here.

#1: Main Bundle page after selecting “Seattle” as location to show spending (29 Jan. 2010)

#2: Main page after drilling down through the “Food & Drink” bubble (link)
Note: Top five restaurants for dining out in Seattle are Starbucks, McDonalds, Subway, Red Robin and Cheesecake Factory. That sounds possible, but then the average purchase size is listed at $115. That’s a lot of lattes or Big Macs.

#3: The ever-present “spending balls” hover above an article by Bundle Managing Editor Janet Paskin’s short post. The balls compare the spending in Brooklyn with her hometown Seattle
Note: Brooklyn comes out cheaper, see the solid circles (Brooklyn) in front of the cross-hatched ones (Seattle).

Notes:
1. See our previous reports on Social Personal Finance (2007) and Online Investment Communities (2008).
2. Wesabe would seem to be a great acquisition if Bundle wants to add the aggregation technology piece and jump-start its user base. Blippy-like features would also make the site more sticky.
3. For more background on the software tools being used, see the article on Bundle in Microsoft’s Financial Services publication published 22 Nov. 2009.

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FinovateSpring’s Lowest Ticket Prices Expire in 3 Days!

By Eric Mattson Posted on January 27, 2010
Categories: Finovate

Just a quick reminder that the lowest early-bird ticket prices for FinovateSpring 2010 (May 11 in San Francisco) will expire at the end of January (a mere 3 days from now). If you register this week, you’ll save $300 on your ticket and lock in your spot to see debuts and demos of dozens of new financial and banking technological innovations.

Tickets are selling strongly with attendees from great organizations like Visa, Wells Fargo, USAA, AARP, Filene, Google, Capitol One, Experian and many others registering in the last few hours alone.

FinovateSpring 2010, in case you’re not familiar with it, is one of our twice-yearly showcases of the best new ideas in banking and financial technology. The show is built around a unique blend of fast-paced demos of actual technology (no slides!) and high-quality networking with an audience of senior FI executives, fintech entrepreneurs, VCs, press, industry analysts and bloggers. It’s an awesome environment to find your next competitive edge.

Don’t miss out on the best prices on tickets to this great show. Register now!

P.S. Online Banking Report subscribers are entitled to an extra discount to our Finovate conferences. Email me to get it.

Eric Mattson is CEO of Online Financial Innovations, the parent company of NetBanker, Online Banking Report and the Finovate Conference Series. He can be reached at eric@netbanker.com.

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What Does the New Apple iPad Mean for Banking?

By Jim Bruene Posted on January 27, 2010
Categories: Apple, iPhone, Mobile Banking, Strategies

Apple today introduced its latest invention, a gigantic $499 iPod Touch called the iPad (inset shows iPad, Kindle, vs. iPhone; note 1).

It’s a gorgeous piece of technology that will soon be the movie-watching, ebook-reading device of choice for the rich and famous. But what does it mean for the average financial institution?

Tactically, it should have almost zero impact. Your iPhone/iTouch app should work pretty much the same on the iPad. There may be some design tweaks your programmers will need to understand, but the basic functionality is the same.

It would make a wonderful giveaway item, either as part of a high-end business/private banking package (note 2), or as a sweepstakes prize.

So those of you who already have an iPhone app launched, or in the pipeline, can stop reading now. But read on if you haven’t yet hopped on the app bandwagon.

___________________________________________________________________________

The movement to apps, and away from old-school “browsing,” is unstoppable. The iPad joins a growing list of new devices (Android, Kindle, etc.) that are app-primary, browser-secondary (note 3).

It’s a massive shift that’s happened in less than two years, beginning in July 2008 when Apple opened the iPhone platform.

The popularity of apps is changing how users tap online info. Even power laptop/desktop users are making dramatic changes in their information consumption. For example, within a few months of the Apple app store launch, I had already moved 12 of my routine info-gathering tasks to the iPhone. The speed/convenience of pressing a single button vs. navigating to a website via the browser is a significant improvement in user experience. More than a year later, my habits have changed little.

The change from serving customers who were “online browsers” and are now “mobile app users” has profound implications for banking. Instead of talking to your customers in batch- mode with built-in time delays, you are now real-time, feeding data to customer on the go, where they need up-to-the-minute status on their cash situation.

In many ways, the ROI for real-time banking (and here) is more dramatic than online-batch banking. The ability to stamp out POS fraud, to nip budding customer service nightmares, and just plain get closer to the customer, all bring nice returns on the mobile investment (note 3).

Notes:
1. Photo credit: TechCrunch post today.
2. For more info on using a dedicated device for small business customers, see our October Online Banking Report.
3. Groundswell author and Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff calls this the “splinternet.”
4. For more info on financial services opportunities on the iPhone, see our March Online Banking Report.
5. Initial response online was mixed, 2,700 readers of CrunchGear, voted “thumbs sideways” today (link, results at 4PM Pacific below)

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Blippy Demonstrates the Power of Real-Time Streaming of Financial Transaction Data

By Jim Bruene Posted on January 25, 2010
Categories: Alerts & Messaging, Best of the Web, Blippy, Launches, Personal Financial Management, Social Networks, Twitter

Blippy has been one of the more controversial financial entrants in the past few years. Observers have called it the “end of privacy as we know it,” a way to take “oversharing to a dizzying new level,” and a “great tool for phishers.” And those are just the people who like it.

Blippy, a kind of Twitter meets Yodlee service, allows users to stream their purchase activity to the startup’s website. Users can choose to publish data from credit and debit cards, bank accounts, and/or directly from purchase activity at ecommerce-partners sites (see list below). It’s the ecommerce transaction stream that provides the richest data describing the actual product purchased or rented rather than just a dollar total.

For example, here’s an entry from @Julia who’s connected her Amazon account directly to Blippy (note 1) As you can see the Amazon purchases are shown in detail and one of the items, a giraffe teether, has elicited a question/comment from a friend (highlighting ours):

In comparison, credit card transactions list only the merchant name and not what was purchased. However, Blippy allows users to annotate their transactions to add that detail, as you can see in the following entry.

One of the most common ways Blippy is used is to stream media consumption via iTunes and Netflix. Here are the three Netflix movies on their way to @crobertsjr:

The Palo Alto-based startup received a $1.6 million angel round in January 2010 from Ron Conway, Jason Calacanis, Twitter’s Evan Williams, Sequoia Capital, Charles River Ventures, and others.

How it works
I got my first taste of Blippy after it opened to the public on Jan. 14. It’s simple to get started, calling for just an email address, screenname and password. You also have the option of finding friends using your email address book or choosing from a list of 13 suggested people including Blippy founder Philip Kaplan (@PUD) and interstar Jason Calacanis (@jason).

But you don’t even need to register for Blippy to see it in action. There’s a live stream on the homepage that anyone can watch (see screenshot below). If Blippy follows the Twitter/Facebook model, they will soon have an API available that will let outside developers tap the data stream.

Usage stats

Number of beta users: More than 5,000 who streamed $4.5 million worth of transactions
Most-streamed merchant: Netflix with 54,000 entries
Most prolific spender (that I ran across): Foo Bar (@foo), who does not identify himself other than CEO at a gaming startup, has linked his business credit card and streamed more than 350 purchases worth more than $300,000 (he’s a big online advertiser at Google, MySpace, Facebook).
Most-followed user: Leo Laporte (@leolaporte), from the Premiere Radio Network, with more than 2,600 followers

Features/benefits

Data sharing within workgroups:

Ability to share financial transactions within a family, a workgroup, or small business. It would be a great way for financial gatekeepers, e.g., the bookkeeper, CFO, or even board members/investors to keep tabs on company spending (see @foo above).
Ability to annotate expense streams. Users can add short descriptions to expense items so their followers can see the specifics.
Ability to discuss/comment on expense items. For example, CFO can ask “why did our Google AdWords expense spike yesterday?” and anyone in the group can comment back with an answer or speculation. We use Yammer in our company for this type of back and forth.

Product research/social networking:

Ability to find other customers of the same store
Ability to discuss product or media purchases with friends or strangers
Ability to post positive/negative info about purchases (yours or others)
Ability to find previous purchasers of a product you are considering (currently not supported through search)
Ability to compare how much people paid for a certain item (not currently supported through search)

Personal financial management:

Ability to annotate expenses for future reporting (e.g., marking taxable items)
Store transactions free for as long as Blippy keeps the servers running
Ability to search own transactions

Financial institution opportunities
1. Card companies and banks should create similar sharing functionality for alerts; especially for small business clients. While public posting of purchase data may never have mass appeal, there are many private uses for real-time transaction data.

2. PFM’s should be building this functionality now to get out in front of Mint/Intuit who could simply acquire Blippy and incorporate real-time data flow within weeks.

3. Once the Blippy API becomes available, banks should tap it to allow their customers to use it directly from within online banking.

Analysis
Whether Blippy lives on as a standalone service is difficult to predict. It depends on whether these capabilities are incorporated into other social networks, particularly, Facebook (note 2) and Twitter. And how fast card issuers move to make real-time transaction info easily available to their own customers.

But regardless of where the company nets out, Blippy should be credited with pioneering real-time financial transaction flow, something every financial institution and ecommerce company will support in the coming years. As a result, we are awarding Blippy an OBR Best of the Web award, our first of 2010 and just the third in the past 14 months (note 3, previous winners).

Blippy Homepage (14 Jan. 2010 7 PM Pacific)

Optional sign-in to Gmail, Yahoo or AOL to locate friends on Blippy

Purchases/activity at these merchants can be automatically tracked
Note: 13 ecommerce merchants currently participate (Amazon, Apple iTunes, Audible, Blockbuster, GoDaddy, GroupOn, Netflix, SeamlessWeb, Stubhub, Threadless, Wine Library, Woot, Zappos)

The Blippy real-time transaction stream
Note: You can choose to watch all activity or just that of the people you are following

Notes:
1. If she hadn’t given Blippy her Amazon login info and linked only her credit card, there would be no product detail. It would just show as $80.95 spent at Amazon.
2. Blippy is similar to Facebook’s ill-fated Beacon service launched in Nov. 2007. The service was quickly toned down, then eventually dismantled, due to the privacy brouhaha that ensued. Blippy is very different because its users are signing up specifically to share purchase info.
3. OBR Best of the Web awards, from Online Banking Report, are given periodically to companies that pioneer new online and mobile banking features. It is not an endorsement of the company or product, just recognition for what we believe is an important development. Blippy is the 76th recipient since we began awarding it in 1997. There were just two winners in 2009.

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Number of online banking users:	500 (10% of members)
Number of bill-pay users:	200 (40% of online banking users)
Number of P2P payment users:	3 (1.5% of bill-pay users, 0.6% of online banking users)