USAA Reveals Plans for Virtual Wallet, P2P and Video

USAA's always been an early adopter of new digital banking technology, due in part to its unique customer base of military personal, who are often dispatched to locations around the world on short notice.

Given that fluid nature of its customers' geographic locations, web and mobile access are attractive to the financial services company, as is basing its new product development heavily on customer feedback.

Neff Hudson, USAA's assistant vice president of emerging channels, recently met with BTN to discuss the bank's future plans to expand its mobile banking, payments and other remote financial services.

BTN: What are some new things that you're working on right now?
Hudson: We're testing a virtual wallet with a limited group of our members. We take a customer sharing approach to development. We do testing; get feedback on what makes a product or service offering of value and what we have to change. This may take about a year or so to play out, but we want to make sure our members can reap the benefits of a virtual wallet without having to go somewhere else. We'll also probably participate in some of the open [mobile] wallets and partner with tech companies to add services.

BTN: Can you describe some of the other emerging payments programs that you are working on?
Hudson: We're doing a P2P pilot right now with PayPal to execute payments [from USAA customers] to people who are not members of USAA …We want to see the person-to-person ecosystem play out as it takes off over the next few years. It may take volume out of our cash business and other payment forms such as checks. But the more we can get rid of cash and checks, we're happy. We're a [direct banker]. Anything we can do to take paper out of the equation is big. We'll be developing our P2P service through 2012 through partnerships and on our own.

BTN: How is digital technology being used to expand customer service capabilities?
Hudson: We're looking to introduce two-way video. We're testing a 'click to see,' a two-way video technology that will run on a users' desktop and allow [consumers] to have a video chat. We're relying on our in-house IT department to build out the technology for the video chats. We're going to run tests to see how it works, and scale it's use in 2012.

BTN: Are you expanding mobile banking tech?
Hudson: We're planning a new mobile app release that will be available for download in the app store and in the Android store by early November. We've redone the architecture of our mobile app to add new iPad applications, and to add remote deposit capture on every one of our mobile devices though a file upload. These new services are in direct result to consumer feedback. We want to give our consumers more power and more control on their mobile devices, and we feel good that this new mobile rollout will be well-received.

BTN: What are some of your plans for other channels?
Hudson: We have cash collection points [with partners]. We're also looking at cash dispersement, figuring out who we can partner with to push cash out to members in the right geographic location. We're also increasing our ATM network, putting ATMs in places like CVS pharmacies in Washington.

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