PNC Bank Launches iPhone Mobile Banking in Apple App Store

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Apple, iPhone, mFoundry, Mobile Banking, PNC Bank

image You’d think that seven months after Apple launched the App Store for the iPhone, it would no longer be news when a U.S. bank adds an application to the store.

It’s not like a cost-prohibitive slotting fee is involved. Developers pay Apple exactly zero dollars to be listed in the store (note 1). Apple’s revenue is from the 30% share of any fees charged for an app. All the bank apps are free, so that’s not an issue.

But it is news since the addition of PNC Bank two weeks age (app here) brings the grand total of bank-specific apps to four, five if you count PayPal. Even if you include the several dozen banks supported by Firethorn’s multi-bank app, there are still no more than 40 banks supported (note 2). And there’s not a single credit union, yet. 

Here are the five App Store participants in order of their appearance:

Wells Fargo has an iPhone app, but it’s not yet shown up in the official App Store.

PNC mobile banking app
PNC’s entry is a full-featured app powered by mFoundry. Along with balance and transaction activity, it includes bill pay, funds transfer, and an ATM finder with location-based capabilities. Users must enable mobile banking from within online banking in order to use the app.

The app has risen from number 17 in the Finance category a week ago to 13 today (note 3). However, the app has not yet made it to the PNC website (note 4).

PNC iPhone App screenshots (11 Feb 2009)

image        image

image

Notes:
1. The app does need to be approved by Apple, a process that can take weeks or longer.
2. Users can also track thousands of financial institutions through Mint or PageOnce.
3. Bank of America is #1, Chase is #4, PayPal is #5, Mint is #6, Firethorn is #9.
4. A PNC.com site search for “iphone” yielded just one result, an iphone listed in a mobile banking compatibility table. (Off topic: Note to PNC Bank, your site search doesn’t function in Firefox 3.0).
5. For more information on the market, see our Online Banking Report on Mobile Banking and the latest forecast in last month’s Online Banking Report Online & Mobile Forecast.

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MoneyAisle Introduces Multi-Auction CD Laddering

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Auction platforms, Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, MoneyAisle

image CD laddering is a great way to increase yield without sacrificing liquidity. Sophisticated savers have used the strategy, often at the suggestion of personal or private bankers. It’s not rocket science, but it takes a bit more planning.

It’s a trivial bit of logic to program a ladder tool into a computer or website, so it’s surprising that it’s rarely featured on banking sites (note 1). That may be because most financial institutions have dozens of product lines to nurture, and it’s difficult to justify the resources for speciality features.

That’s just the kind of thinking that creates market opportunities for startups like MoneyAisle from neoSaej. The Boston-area company, which made its public debut at Finovate 2008 (demo video here), is totally focused on deposits and can justify the investment in advanced features. In fact, their livelihood depends on it.

So it makes sense they’d be first to market with an automated CD-laddering tool. But what makes it especially impressive is that MoneyAisle users can run up to 30 simultaneous auctions placing funds in up to 30 different financial institutions (see note 2).  

In our test of a relatively simple, but typical, four-rung ladder (see below), four different financial institutions won the bidding:

  • MetLife paying 2.1% for a $25,000 3-month CD
  • First National Bank of Florida paying 2.3% for a $25,000 6-month CD
  • Wainwright Bank paying 2.5% for a $25,000 9-month CD
  • KeySource Commercial Bank paying 2.93% for a $25,000 12-month CD

And by distributing our funds into four different maturities, 3-month, 6-month, 9-month, and 12-month, we were able to increase the yield by 0.36% compared to putting it all into 3-month certificates. And we are still able to withdraw 25% of our funds every 3 months without penalty. To further increase yield, the shorter-term CDs could be reinvested into longer-term CDs at maturity, e.g., each CD could be rolled into one-year CDs at maturity to create a ladder of four 12-month CDs with one maturing every 3 months.

Advanced option: The advanced ladder is designed for users that want to spread their deposits around. The money designated for each CD maturity can be spread to two or three different banks if desired. Users may also choose up to 10 banks they want excluded from the bidding.

Simple CD ladder tool at MoneyAisle (11 Feb. 2009)

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 Results from the above auction: Four $25,000 CDs of varying maturities
(11 Feb. 2009)

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MoneyAisle’s Advanced laddering tool (11 Feb. 2009)

 image

Notes:
1. Bank of America has a Java-based laddering calculator here as does Citizens Bank (here) and Safe Credit Union (here).

2. The maximum number of simultaneous auctions in the simple ladder program (shown above) is 10.

3. For more information on MoneyAisle and other new lead-gen programs, see our Online Banking Report on Lead Generation and our recent report on Growing Your Deposits Online.

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Online Personal Finance Traffic Soars; Mint Passes One Million Unique Visitors

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Geezeo, Intuit, LendingTree, Mint, Personal Financial Management, Thrive, Wesabe

imageJanuary is always a great month for personal finance. Consumers working off holiday spending binges and/or attempting to live up to New Years resolutions naturally find their way to personal financial management sites. It’s especially pronounced this year as consumers try to better understand their spending and manage for the downturn.

So it’s not surprising to see that traffic grew by 300,000 unique visitors in January (+20%) compared to December. Total traffic was up 4.5-fold at sites open for a year or more (see Table 1). Including the class of 2008, total traffic was 2.0 million, a five-fold increase from a year ago.

Highlights:

  • Mint had another great month, increasing site visitors by about 200,000, a five-fold increase in the past year. Mint’s gain in January was more than that total traffic of all nine 2008 newcomers combined. Mint had a 60% market share of the total of 1.8 million visitors in the category, about the same as December.  image
  • Geezeo continued its wicked pace, growing 30% during the month, and posting a 12-fold increase over a year ago.
  • Quicken Online, which launched in January 2008, more than doubled visitors to 150,000 compared to December. However, traffic at Quicken is hard to compare to other sites due to the massive traffic at its parent site: for example, <quicken.intuit.com> received 1.2 million visitors and <intuit.com> website had more than 10 million. 
  • image Wesabe was the only site, of those open for a year or more, that turned in a traffic decline, falling more than 30% in the month. However, keep in mind the Compete estimates are derived from an online panel and are not always accurate, especially for sites in the low six-figures or less. The company said that it had record page views in January. That includes both U.S. traffic, measured by Compete, and international visitors.
  • BudgetTracker also turned in amazing results, nearly doubling its traffic to an imageestimated 27,000 visitors.
  • Of the 2008 startups (see Table 2), Thrive was the only one showing strong growth, increasing 50% over the previous month. On Friday the company was acquired by Lending Tree for an undisclosed amount.

Table 1: Traffic at online PFMs launched more than one year ago

  Jan 2009 Dec 2008 Jan 2008 YOY Chg
Mint 1.1 mil 890,000 200,000 5.2x
Geezeo 220,000 170,000 18,000 12x
Yodlee 120,000 100,000 84,000 44%
Finicity/Mvelopes 100,000 71,000 91,000 10%
Wesabe 89,000 140,000 56,000 60%
BudgetTracker 27,000 14,000 15,000 86%
Buxfer 22,000 15,000 13,000 78%
PearBudget 12,000 7,600 4,200 3x
ClearCheckbook
BudgetPulse		 11,000
8,200		 9,100
4,300		 4,600
2,200		 2.3x
3.6x
Total 1.7 mil 1.4 mil 490,000 4.5x

Table 2: Traffic at the online PFM class of 2008

  Jan 2009 Dec 2008 Month Chg
Quicken Online 150,000 53,0
00		 1.8x
PNC Virtual Wallet 41,000 45,000 (9%)
Rudder 39,000 61,000 (35%)
Thrive 21,000 14,000 52%
Scred 2,600 630 4x
Expensr 2,500 3,700 (32%)
RateSurfer 2,100 3,600 (41%)
Expensify 1,400 600 2.5x
Banzai 1,300 1,500 (15%)
GreenSherpa 400 ina —
iThryv 210 2,100 (90%)
Total 260,000 185,000 41%

Source: Compete, 7 Feb. 2009; estimates of monthly unique visitors from the United States

*The percent changes were calculated from the underlying data set and due to rounding of the monthly traffic figures; the percentages may look slightly off

Note: For more information on the market, see our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features and Online Banking Report on Social Personal Finance.

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UK’s MoBank Could be the First of a New Wave of Banking & Payments Companies Optimized for Mobile Delivery

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Launches, MoBank, Mobile Banking, Mobile Commerce, Mobile Payments

imageMoBank, the U.K.-based mobile banking and payments said to be launching this month, is creating some buzz on the other side of the Atlantic (stories here, here, and here).  Given the pedigree of its two founders, Steve Townsend and Dominic Keen, who blazed many online banking trails at Egg and First Direct, it should provide a glimpse of the future of mobile finance.

The company is establishing a call center on the Isle of Man, run by Steph Gregg, a veteran of Egg, First Direct and Vodafone. Melanie Hunter is head of marketing, and David Rubin is head of mcommerce.

The company was named to Red Herring’s top-100 global start-up list last month (here) along with FinovateStartup alum ClairMail (demo video here).

It appears at launch the service will support bill payment and certain mcommerce activities, such as purchasing movie tickets. An iPhone app is expected at launch. Users will register their credit/debit card(s) with the service. The company plans to expand into mobile banking and money-management activities in the future. 

The company has raised more than $1 million according to news reports. The company was founded in 2006 and presented at The Essential Web conference in June 2007
(p. 43, here) and had four employees at that time.

Here’s how the company described itself 18 months ago:

MoBank is creating the world’s first mobile-led online bank. The company believes that, for some sections of the population, small screen devices will become the channel of choice for most banking and payment services. moBank’s business model is based on providing a free-to-use basic banking service with paid-for add-on features. Furthermore, moBank’s users are enabled to participate in a range of unique, value-generating m-retail activities.

What’s innovative: It sounds like a mobile-based account aggregation and bill-pay service, similar to Mint on the iPhone. But it could also contract directly with one or more banks like SmartyPig has (previous coverage). But as ING Direct proved, optimizing on a new delivery channel can pay off with great word of mouth and positive press.

MoBank pre-launch homepage (6 Feb. 2009)

image

Note: For more info on the growing market, see our Online Banking Report on Mobile Banking.

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BarCampBank Season: Four Alt-Banking Conferences Scheduled

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: BarCamp Bank, Conference Calendar

imageWillingly attending an agenda-less (note 1) meeting of credit union enthusiasts, consultants, bloggers, fintech startups, and even the occasional banker, can be difficult to explain to your boss, let alone your spouse.

But if you want to improve your bank-geek cred
— and really who doesn’t
— the 2009 BarCampBank season begins in 10 days with two events in Europe. Then it’s back to the western United States with the second annual San Francisco BCB the last weekend of April (not coincidentally scheduled two days before our FinovateStartup so you can make both), and finally a new Vegas version the following weekend.

  • Feb. 14  BarCampBankLondon2 (12 registered, no bankers yet)
  • Feb. 16  BarCampBankMadrid (75 registered, with dozens of bankers, see note 2)
  • April 25/26 BarCampBankSF2 (the weekend before FinovateStartup on Tues., April 28)
  • May 2 BarCampBankVegas (organized by Robbie Wright and timed around the NACUSO convention) image

    • Notes:
    1. It’s not truly agenda-less; rather, there is no agenda ahead of time, it’s created on the fly by attendees (see inset, photo credit Thomas Barker).

    2. Re: BCB Madrid: Congratulations to our friend Jesus Perez Sanchez at Financial Red. It looks like he’s helped pull off the biggest BCB yet, and with great participation from bankers. It’s a trend I hope continues in the states.

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    Mobile Banking Stats: 40% of Bank of America’s 2 million Mobile Bankers Use iPhone or iPod Touch

    By Jim Bruene Posted on
    Categories: Bank of America, Metrics & Market Research, Mobile Banking

    image Bank of America has been making the rounds with the press touting the runaway success of its mobile banking solutions. Major stories ran in American Banker and The Wall Street Journal this week.

    The bank, with 29 million online banking users, reports numbers just shy of the 2-million mark in mobile. That’s up from one million early this summer (post here). While it’s still less than 10% of online banking customers, it’s an impressive number considering fewer than 4 million mobile banking households exist in the entire country (see note 1).

    Several other interesting stats from BofA:

    • More than 40% of active mobile bankers
      — 
      someone who’s logged in within the past 90 days
      — 
      use an iPhone or iPod touch. That’s about double the usage you’d expect given Apple’s 23% share of the U.S. installed smart phone base (note 2, 3).
    • The bank believes the mobile channel is driving some new business to the bank with 8% to 10% of mobile bankers, almost 200,000, having signed up for the service within 90 days of opening a BofA account (note 4).

    image

    Source: ChangeWave Research, survey of 3,800 cell phone users fielded Dec. 9 – 15, 2008 (link)

    Notes:
    1. See our latest Online Banking Report: Online & Mobile Forecast for more details.
    2. The 23% figure does not include iPod Touch.
    3. One other bank provided its usage numbers to the WSJ: Mississippi’s BankPlus reported 4,000 users with 60% of the usage (2,400) coming from iPhone users.
    4. That number doesn’t seem all that surprising. You’d expect new customers would be somewhat more likely to sign up for new delivery channels than the existing base. And given typical banking churn, 10% to 20% of a bank’s customer base are new every year.

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    E*Trade Casts a Wide Social Net to Support the "Baby" Campaign

    By Jim Bruene Posted on
    Categories: Advertising & Promotion, E*Trade, Facebook, Investment Products, Twitter

    image In my pre-Super Bowl post about E*Trade’s “baby” franchise, I wasn’t aware of several other ways the company is using social media to increase awareness:

    • Baby’s Twitter page (screenshot #1 below and note 1;): This is a new effort launched Jan. 22, the same day the 2009 outtakes clip was released into the wild via YouTube and press release. The baby Tweeted a few times on the days leading up to the game, and a few since, but the funniest part was the 26 game-day Tweets that actually incorporated real-time events into the script. There are only 650 followers today, but that’s up 150 since Monday morning — not a bad start for a low-cost marketing tool. 
    • Baby’s Facebook page (screenshot #2 below): Also launched around Jan. 22, the E*Trade baby Facebook page already has 3,825 fans. The commercials are posted along with a photo album. 

    The E*Trade homepage has also been used before and after the game to take advantage of interest in the baby ads. The baby dominated E*Trade’s homepage the day after the big game (see screenshot #3 below of the Monday morning homepage). 

    Lessons for financial institutions
    You don’t have to be a Super Bowl advertiser to use social media to support your advertising campaigns. Banks and credit unions of any size can use these relatively low-cost tactics.

    Here are the eight key support elements to consider for your next campaign:

       1. Press release
       2. Blog entries
       3. Facebook page
       4. Twitter stream
       5. YouTube page
       6. Homepage placement
       7. Landing page
       8. Google keyword buys (see screenshot #4 below)

    1. E*Trade baby Twitter page (link, 3 Feb. 2009)

    image


    2. E*Trade Facebook page     (link, 3 Feb. 2009)

    image


    3. E*Trade homepage the morning after Super Bowl XVIII     (2 Feb. 2009)

    image

    4. E*Trade is running Google ads on searches for “etrade baby”
    (3 Feb. 2009, 6PM Pacific)

    image

    Note:
    1. Thanks Jeffry Pilcher for the Twitter tip.

    2. See our Online Banking Report: Bank 2.0 for more ideas.

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    FinovateStartup 2009 Conference Participants Announced

    By Jim Bruene Posted on
    Categories: Conference Calendar, Conferences, Finovate, Launches

    imageFinovateStartup09, our annual springtime technology event in the San Francisco Bay area, is just three months away. Today, we announced the first wave of young companies committed to participate on April 28.

    More companies are in the pipeline, and when all is said and done we expect more than 50 startups to be on hand to demonstrate the latest in online and mobile financial services and technology.

    The Finovate format combines fast-paced demos (no PowerPoint!) with extensive networking where you can meet the start-up founders along with influential industry executives, press corps, and analysts. To get a taste for the event, take a look at videos of past demos.

    Because we hadn’t named any companies until today, we’ve extended the Super Early Bird registration deadline until this Friday, Feb. 6 (register here). See you in San Francisco.

    Finovate Startup 2009 lineup (as of 2 Feb. 2009):

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    E*Trade Rides the Popularity of its “Baby” Super Bowl Ad

    By Jim Bruene Posted on
    Categories: Advertising & Promotion, E*Trade, YouTube

    image16 Even before the next installment of its popular talking baby runs later today during the Super Bowl, E*Trade has already scored.

    Through advance publicity and select print ads highlighting the “baby URL” <etrade.com/baby> (note 1), the online broker/banker has already landed more than 2 million views of the outtakes for today’s Super Bowl ad. And the clip was posted to YouTube just nine days ago (22 Jan. 2009). 

    The E*Trade outtake clip (below) currently ranks 13th on the most-viewed videos of the month at YouTube, an extremely high level of popularity for a corporate-sponsored clip unrelated to music or film.

    Demonstrating the power of making YouTube’s most-viewed list, the E*Trade outtake clip is only 100,000 views shy of surpassing the Trading Baby clip from the 2008 Super Bowl, a video that’s been online for a full year.

    Here’s the view count as of 9:30 AM Pacific today (Feb. 1):

    2.2 million   Trading baby from the 2008 Super Bowl (posted 1 Feb. 2008)

    2.1 million   2009 outtakes (posted 22 Jan. 2009)

    1.6 million   Banking baby from the 2008 Super Bowl (posted 1 Feb. 2008)

    270,000      Mobile  baby (posted 30 June 2008)

    All clips are posted on the company’s official YouTube page (see below).

    E*Trade’s YouTube channel (link, 1 Feb. 2009)

    image_thumb2

    E*Trade “baby” landing page six hours before the 2009 Super Bowl
    (link, 1 Feb. 2009)

    image_thumb4

    Note:
    1. The E*Trade baby teaser ad ran in the 31 Jan. 2009 Weekend Wall Street Journal. The quarter-page ad, one of only six ads in the entire paper, ran on page W6 (West Coast edition).

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    Compete Reports an 8% Monthly Increase in Online Credit Card Applications, But 23% Decline from 2008

    By Jim Bruene Posted on
    Categories: Compete, Credit/Debit Cards, Metrics & Market Research

    imageFor card issuers, the latest online application activity is is either good news, bad news, or neither since Compete tracks only applications submitted, not approvals. This following chart was presented in its webinar today. You can request the entire deck at the bottom of its blog post.

    According to Compete, there were more than 12 million credit card shoppers in the U.S. in December, up 6% from November and down 11% since a year ago. Of the shoppers, about 20%, or 2.4 million submitted an application. That was an 8% increase from Nov., but a 23% decline from a year ago. 

    But Compete has no way to measure whether the card applications it tracks are approved. Recent data from Lending Club shows that less than 10% of its online consumer loan applications were approved in Q4. The big credit card issuers probably do a bit better by driving creditworthy borrowers to their sites via direct mail and online advertising.

    Assuming approval rates of 20%, the 2.4 million credit apps in December resulted in about a half-million new accounts.  

    image

    Source: Compete, 29 Jan. 2009

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    New Online Banking Report Available: Ten-Year Online & Mobile Banking Forecast and 2008 Recap

    By Jim Bruene Posted on
    Categories: Metrics & Market Research, Mobile Banking, Online Banking Report

    image The latest Online Banking Report: 2009 to 2018 Online & Mobile Banking Forecast is now available. It was mailed yesterday to subscribers. It’s also available online here. There’s no charge for current subscribers; others may access it immediately for US$495.

    The report includes our latest 10-year online banking and bill pay forecast. This year we again bumped our long-term usage forecast to 6%, up from 3%, to reflect a more robust outlook for adoption, primarily from mobile-only users. For example, we are now projecting 71 million U.S. households banking and/or paying bills online by 2013 compared to last year’s forecast predicting 66 million for the same period.

    Mobile banking (see note 1) access is included in the overall online banking numbers, but it’s also shown as a separate line item. Based on the new open-platform standards ushered in by the iPhone and App Store, we increased both our short- and long-term adoption forecast by 10% to 20%. For example, by year-end 2011 we now predict there will be 18 million U.S. mobile banking households. A year ago we forecasted 16 million.

    We also included a revised forecast for U.S. peer-to-peer lending. We cut back our short-term estimates by more than 50% due to regulatory and economic constraints on the business. A full 10-year forecast is included in the report.

    Top ten innovations & trends of 2008
    The report also includes a summary of the top ten innovations of the past year including the surge in mobile banking demand and the marked increase in traffic to personal finance speciality sites such as Mint and SmartyPig.  

    Note:
    1. A mobile banking household is one where someone has used a mobile device to access bank or credit card account info within the past six months. Includes text-based queries, but not simple broadcast alerts.

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    neoSaej’s MoneyAisle Generates $100 Million in Deposits in Q4 2008

    By Jim Bruene Posted on
    Categories: Deposits, Checking, Savings, CDs, Lead Generation, Metrics & Market Research, MoneyAisle

    image It’s so refreshing to have some real numbers to go on, even if they are self reported. Aside from Prosper, Lending Club (here), and most recently SmartyPig (here), few of the startups we track provide meaningful metrics on their operations. That’s why we use Compete website traffic estimates as a proxy for success.

    Yesterday, MoneyAisle, the reverse-deposit-auction marketplace from neoSaej, released the following results for fourth quarter 2008 (press release): 

    • $1.65 billion in auctions run by consumers, up three-fold from Q3 2008 (note 1)
    • $100 million in deposits generated

    That’s not a lot, but we can make a few estimates from that info (note 2):

    • Assuming 80 active bank partners, the average take per bank in Q4 was $1.25 million
    • But applying the 80/20 rule to those results means that 16 banks generated about $80 million in deposits, or $5 million each
    • And conversely, the remaining 64 banks brought in just $300,000 each
    • Assuming the average deposit balance auctioned was $20,000, five thousand separate auction winners funded a deposit
    • Assuming a commission of $37 per funded auction (note 2), neoSaej would have generated $185,000 in commission income in Q4, this is in addition to license fees and monthly maintenance fees

    And for those of you who still want traffic numbers, MoneyAisle’s website usage (monthly unique visitors) has been trending upwards after suffering a post-launch dip in November. In December, visitors totaled just under 20,000. 

    image

    Bottom line: It’s a promising start for the company which earned an OBR Best of the Web this summer, was picked by the audience as Best of Show in October’s Finovate (video here), and was recently chosen as a top-10 innovation of the year in our most recent Online Banking Report (here).

    When MoneyAisle adds integrated online account opening (powered by Andera), results should be even stronger. 

    Notes:
    1. Deposit-generated total is 6% of total auctions run, because consumers are not obligated to make the deposit after they run the auction.

    2. My speculative estimates, not provided from the company.

    3. We outlined the company in a June blog post and in the pages of our Online Banking Report on New Models for Lead Generation and Online Banking Report on Growing Deposits in the Digital Age. 

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