Coastal Bank

Headquarters: Savannah, Ga.
Asset size: $450 million
Project: White-labeling low-cost, on-demand personal financial management software.
Why it's cool: The bank can bypass the cost of development.

On-Demand PFM at Coastal

Established iPhone and Android applications are available for mobile banking, but the up-front costs can be too much for a small bank. Integration with a bank's core system is another challenge. Coastal Bank is blowing past both issues and white labeling a "financial decision-support" app for iPhone and Android devices that costs 99 cents per user per month — and only if the customer uses the app in that month. The app, called Grip, provides mobile access to balance updates and transaction records as well as bill payment and balance alerts. It offers a personal money management tool that includes dashboard views of the customer's aggregated cash and credit balances at the bank and from accounts outside the bank, and points the bank to potential cross-selling opportunities.

"With Grip, it's the true sense of an app without the tremendous expense," says Adam Montgomery, director of marketing for Coastal. "It's a fantastic user experience. The key is, if you don't use it, you don't pay for it." Grip was developed by T8 Webware of Cedar Falls, Iowa. T8 is also developing an upgraded website for Coastal that the bank will unveil at the same time as the mobile app.