13% Would Use Banking in Facebook

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Facebook, Metrics & Market Research

In an unscientific poll of 500 Facebook users (see note 1), we found that 13% of respondents are interested in accessing their bank balance through their Facebook account (red bar below).

image
Source: Online Banking Report, 9 April 2008, n = 500

While that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of the idea, it’s potentially enough early adopters to get the service rolling. Most of the interest emanated from younger segments. For example, 18% of 18-to-24 year-olds said they’d probably use Facebook banking (gray bar below) compared to about 5% of the 25-49 group (green and yellow bars below).

image
Source: Online Banking Report, 9 April 2008, n = 500

But it will take education to move “Facebook banking” into the mainstream. The majority of respondents, 70%, said there is “no way” they’d bank within Facebook and another 13% said probably not, resulting in a strong 83% negative rating. Given well-founded concerns surrounding online security, that’s not surprising. 

For more information:

Note:
1. Survey was conducted April 9 through Facebook’s polling mechanism. Total respondents = 500. Respondents are self-selected so the results should not be used to forecast specific demand.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Press/Blogger Coverage of Finovate Startup

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Finovate

 

We are still recovering from an amazing week in the San Francisco sunshine. But luckily our blogger friends picked up the slack with exhaustive coverage of Finovate Startup. It’s great to see blogging beginning to impact the B2B space like it has on the consumer side. 

It takes enormous concentration to listen, much less write about, 40 companies in a single day. So thanks  much to Erin, Scott, Ron, Brad, Matt, Jeff, Corey, Christophe and the others who tirelessly spent their day bringing the event to life through their blogs, videos, and photos (links below).

Blog coverage:

  • For a rundown of each company and its demo, see:
    — a thorough post in Payments News by Scott Loftesness of Glenbrook Partners
    — Erin McCune’s full coverage in her Forte blog
    — Christophe Langlois’ live blogs at NetBanker
  • For critiques of each demo:
    — Brad Garland and friends rate each presentation on a 1 to 5 scale on the Banktastics blog
    — LazyMan demonstrates he’s anything-but in his review of the 40 presentations at Lazy Man and His Money
  • For an insightful critique of the value propositions (or lack thereof) presented by each category of presenter, see Ron Shevlin’s Thursday must-read post in his Marketing Whims (and check out the comments as well)
  • Jeff Stephens at Creative Brand Communications adds his thoughts on several of the themes at The Story blog
  • Wing Yu at FinancialMedia.org posted his interview with Vestopia CEO Steve Markowitz
  • RateLadder posts about Loanio

Finovate Startup attendees grab some early morning sun, photo by Christophe LangloisVideo coverage:

We’ll have exclusive full coverage of all 40 demos in their entirety at our Finovate Startup website within a few weeks. We also had two blogger/videographers active at the event:

  • Banktastic has a 7-minute video with excerpts of interviews with Mint, SmartyPig and Credit Karma here; their conference photos are here
  • Christophe Langlois from Visible Banking shot a number of videos that will be available shortly; his Flickr photostream is here (sample above)

Related press coverage of presenters:

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg Loves Mint, Hates Financial Email

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Alerts & Messaging, Mint, Personal Financial Management, Security & Privacy

imageIt was online banking week in Walt Mossberg’s popular Wall Street Journal technology columns. Yesterday in The Mossberg Solution, authored by 20-something Katherine Boehret and edited by Mossberg, Mint’s personal finance service received a half-page article so complimentary I had to look twice to make sure it wasn’t an advertisement. Boehret couldn’t find a single thing wrong with the service, although she did wish for bill payment capability so she could do all her banking with Mint. I’m sure she’ll have her wish granted relatively soon.

image In today’s Personal Technology column entitled, How to Avoid Cons that Can Lead to Identify Theft, Mossberg himself dropped a bomb which will impact bank-marketing efforts for years to come. His first of seven tips for safe computing:

Never, ever click on a link embedded in an email (from your) financial institution….

That’s harsh, but it’s also understandable why he’d take that stand. Mossberg strives to make technology issues understandable to non-techie readers. However, it would have been better to add, “unless your bank adds account-specific personalization to the messages so you know for sure where they originated.” 

Action items
Many financial institutions, including Citibank and Bank of America, have long used personalization to distinguish legitimate messages from phishing attempts. Financial institutions with good personalized messaging should consider a public outreach program to counter the negative perception from the Mossberg column. It also might be a good time to remind front-line employees how to respond to customer concerns about phishing emails.

For more information, see our Online Banking Report on Marketing Security. 

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateStartup Best of Show Winners Announced

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: BancVue, Finovate, Jwaala, Zecco, Zopa

finovatestartup_logo An important part of Finovate Conferences, at least for the winners, is the voting process for best demo. All non-presenting attendees receive a ballot which allows them to rate each demo on a scale of one to seven. At the end of the final demo sessions, the ballots are tallied and the presenters ranked 1 through 40 based on the average score. A majority of attendees complete a ballot so it's a good indicator of the group consensus.

There were dozens of awesome demos to choose from, but the peoples' choice yesterday are shown below (in alphabetic order). Congratulations!

 First ROI (BancVue)             Jwaala

image    image

Zecco                                                                        Zopa

 image               image 

 

Videos of all the demos will be available soon at the FinovateStartup website.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateStartup Live: ClairMail Demos Triple Play & Credit on Card

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Finovate

Second to last demo. Back to mobile.

ClairMail CEO Joe Salesky takes the stage with so much energy he doesn’t even wait to be introduced. It’s much needed at this point in the afternoon. Shows mobile bill delivery/payment and login via SMS exchange with dynamic link that needs just a password.

Joe closes with a live demo of how fast a text-message query can be returned, asking audience members to text “bal” to a shortcode on the screen. He’s run over his time but closes with a flourish.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateStartup Live: TradeKing Demos TradeKing Community

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Finovate

Mike Massey is going to focus on the TradeKing Community. Excellent news.

Shame Mike was reading, and not sharing his passion and expertise with us. That's what you would expect from the Director of Community Development, right?

Mike was more passionate and relaxed when he started showing the community homepage.

They have a wide range of activities and features to urge people to produce content and contribute: group, blogs, active forums, research produced by members… Excellent.

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook

FinovateStartup Live: Business Logic Debuts MoneyPools

By Jim Bruene Posted on
Categories: Finovate

Proactive identity protection. New version of their flagship service, IDFreeze. Yesterday, they announced the first true family package.

Another service to manage your investments. The interface is simple and intuitive. A lot of graphics and a good Web 2.0 look and feel. The colors are not as fun as on either Zecco, or Mint. It looks like a comprehensive service, but not as cool as the leading Web 2.0 startups.

The presentation was also a bit too dry. No jokes, no frills. Remember that it is already 2:30 p.m., and the pace at Finovate is hectic. Nothing personal, but we need some entertaining presentations!

Share this:

Send Post Twitter LinkedIn Facebook