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U.S. Bank is readying software for fashion brands and other companies to embed into their mobile apps in a bid to facilitate shopping through more traditional marketing channels like print. The initiative adds a wrinkle to the ways in which banks are working to innovate commerce.
February 3 -
Mobile text alerts are increasingly a part of a solid mobile banking customer experience. Industry analysts share best practices, common mistakes and occasional quirks occurring in delivering mobile alerts.
June 26
Monitise plc announced Tuesday it's offering mobile alerting software as a standalone product. The alerts provide updates meant to resolve customer issues and pitch relevant products in multi-step messages.
Monitise, which bought U.S. fintech vendor ClairMail in 2012, sells mobile banking software to financial institutions.
Alerting+, the enhanced alerting software, lets banks regardless of their core mobile banking vendor send more complicated messages to customers than say, low balance alerts, because it now pulls data from a centralized messaging exchange. With the updates, a bank could message a customer about getting overdraft protection after he receives a low balance alert, for example.
The software is pitched as a way to boost banks' mobile engagement with customers and resolve tasks quicker on a channel associated with immediacy. Messages can come in the form of SMS, email or push notifications.
Alerts are perceived by industry observers as a way to strike up conversations with consumers who are increasingly using smartphones to communicate and complete tasks with their bank providers.
The updated tech comes at a time when banks have struggled for years to send alerts to consumers in a timely manner because of challenges like being beholden to legacy core systems that determine when messages can be sent.
Alerting+ is meant to increase mobile interactions, says Marc Winitz, senior vice president of marketing at Monitise. Fraud notification and cross-sale pitches two types of alerts supported. Say a customer signs up for a direct deposit to receive a gift card distributed by the bank, for example. A customer could now receive an alert about the product so that when he logs into the app he will see the $25 credit alert appear in a shopping cart button. This gift card example also underscores Monitise's bolder ambition: integrate a shopping catalog into a mobile banking app.
Already, the UK vendor is working with U.S. Bancorp on developing
Varolii Corp also sells alerting tech to banks in the U.S.
