As consumers get more comfortable opting into location-based mobile services, U.S. Bank has begun asking them to let it see where they're going so the bank can fine-tune its fraud management.
The Geolocation Service, developed by Visa, is an opt-in offering integrated into U.S. Bank’s mobile apps that matches the credit card’s location to that of the customer’s phone. The aim is to do more to ensure transactions on customers’ cards are approved when they’re out of town, minimize disruption and reduce the risk of fraud.
U.S. Bank's earlier work in geolocation has been around customer service or marketing, such as providing ATM and branch locations or hours of operation.
A smartphone's "location is pretty mainstream in terms of being able to utilize it. The question is what you do with it," said U.S. Bank’s chief innovation officer Dominic Venturo.
The retail sector, not limited to banking, uses mobile and geolocation for marketing schemes, like automated check-in or to remind customers if they have a loyalty card they can use.
“Financial institutions may be well behind the curve as an industry,” Venturo said. “We started with credit where credit and mobile intersect. We had an interesting problem to solve, it’s a common occurrence,” he said of transactions declining when customers leave town.
The new program will initially be available to U.S. Bank’s co-brand and financial institution partners. Customers with U.S. Bank FlexPerks Visa credit cards can opt-in through the FlexPerks mobile app. It's also available through the Elan partner financial institutions through the Elan mobile app and will be made available via the U.S. Bank mobile app at a later date.
This is the bank’s fourth project with geolocation technology – and the first that has wider distribution.
“Earlier ones were limited pilots with defined beginning and end dates and limited users,” Venturo said, explaining this offering for Visa customers is more an enhancement of products and services.
Since the bank began experimenting with this technology, mobile usage among its customer base has gone up. It first began pilot programs using voice technology and cameras for remote check deposit.
There are other ways to harness location technology in financial services. For example, Citigroup is testing Bluetooth beacons in a pilot that
But more similar to U.S. Bank’s service, San Antonio Federal Credit Union’s Card Control app lets members
The notion of correlating a credit card with the location of its owner is a particularly great idea for the U.S. market, where most consumers have not moved from magstripe cards to chip cards, said Sanjay Srivastava, chief digital officer at the consulting firm Genpact. By contrast, chip-and-PIN authentication has been the standard in Western Europe for quite some time.
“You get something for giving something,” he said. “As a consumer, everyone wants my geolocation to push me ads and coupons and other stuff. As a user I can actually get a real value benefit either as reduction of fraud or decline of transactions … This is a great way to approach the personal privacy and value exchange discussion."
Geolocation has powerful fraud-fighting capabilities, said Zilvinas Bareisis, a senior analyst at Celent, and could begin to play a bigger role in fraud management, but organizations would have to be sensitive to “the creepiness factor.”
“They've given you permission, but depending on how you're using it, some customers might find it disturbing and some will find it very valuable,” he said.
