The relative elegance and ease of using one credit card issuer’s website versus another’s is an increasingly crucial factor in the fierce competition among large issuers.
Declining to name one particular issuer’s site the best overall, New York-based market research firm Corporate Insight Inc. recently analyzed the websites of the nation’s largest issuers to determine which were most useful based on the firm’s proprietary model for analyzing website performance in various industries.
In a report release this month, Corporate Insight studied the nation’s largest credit card issuers’ websites from the beginning of December through the second week in Janaury and ranked their performance in eight specific areas.
The firm found that many large issuers overhauled their credit card home pages last year, improving navigation capabilities and enabling cardholders to more easily compare the features of various cards, including those of competitors.
“The most interesting new thing we saw was the rise of live chat on credit card issuers’ sites,” Doug Miller, senior analyst for banking and cards, tells PaymentsSource. “Most issuers have improved the opportunities for consumers to type questions into a box on the sites and get answers, and even make changes in their accounts on the spot.”
Though not as high-profile as homepage updates and new site designs, “several firms expanded their marketing and promotional efforts in the social media space,” the report noted, pointing to examples that include American Express Co.’s partnership with social media application Foursquare for automatic savings at specific merchants (
Credit card issuers compete so intensely with one another that “no issuer has the lead for long,” Miller says. “They learn from one another’s best practices very quickly.”
Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc.’s CitiCards ranked first in providing useful card-comparison tools, the firm said.
BofA’s tool enables users to compare 10 cards simultaneously, while Citi’s tool displays five cards with the ability to add or subtract cards without exiting the page. Citi also offers some 40 data points for each card it compares.
Amex and Discover Financial Services ranked first among other issuers in the quality of their website display of transaction history and tools enabling cardholders to search for specific transactions.
Both issuers enable cardholders to use any combination of date range, keyword and amount to locate transactions, with additional filters to further narrow searches. Amex also provides a tool enabling cardholders to create “very precise transaction tables” to track spending in certain categories.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. ranked first in providing the richest tools to retrieve and analyze statements. Chase’s site enables consumers that have opted for paperless statements to easily review or print statements going back 72 months, complete with important statement inserts and issuer announcements, “a feature underutilized by most card issuers,” Corporate Insight said.
Barclays U.S. ranked first in the breadth of its online card-payment features, which include simple options to choose among same-day, future and automatic payments, with “the most extensive payment history of any issuer,” including an archive of every cardholder payment the customer has ever made.
Citi ranked first in the convenience of its balance-transfer offerings, with the recently added ability to make up to four balance transfers simultaneously and the option to have funds deposited into a linked checking account or via a mailed check with a “status meter” tracking the steps needed to complete the process.
BofA ranked first in providing cardholders with easiest access to customer service within its site, with a robust help-search function, help topics embedded in each specific section and a central location enabling cardholders to request instant live chat help.
Discover ranked first in the quality of its online process for initiating inquiries and disputes, the firm said. Discover provides a tool enabling cardholders to initiate disputes through easy-to-access links throughout its site with the opportunity to chat live about disputes with customer service representatives or send a message.
Wells Fargo & Co. was also among card issuers the firm studied but it did not rank first in any of the eight categories.
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