By my calculations, I’ve received more than 25,000 emails from financial institutions. But I don’t recall ever getting one, outside of an onboarding message, encouraging me to add an authorized user to my credit card account (see above). So congratulations to Capital One for finding something new to talk about in the last week of the real summer.
And it makes sense to push for new authorized users. It’s win-win. More revenues for the bank and improved convenience for the customer.
Case in point: I’ve been meaning to get a card for my son in college, so I’ll go with Capital One instead of my other options. It will cost the bank $2 for the chip card and mailer, maybe a few bucks for the credit check (though honestly, they don’t need one as I’m backing his spending) and some misc onboarding expenses. But with near-zero additional credit risk, most of the new interchange (and potential revolving) revenues will go right to the bottom. And they have a much better opportunity to turn my son into a long-time customer if they have a card in his hand now.
Bottom line: Capital One could improve the user experience once you click through the email (see UX analysis here). But overall, it’s a good effort.
Author: Jim Bruene (@netbanker) is Founder & Senior Advisor to Finovate as well as Principal of BUX Advisors, a financial services user-experience consultancy.