Stories from our Finovate blog are covering the most innovative financial technology companies in the world, and more alumni news is available on our Finovate Twitter feed.

Half of Fast Company's 10 Most Innovative Financial Companies are Finovate Alums

Fast Company's list of the 10 most innovative financial companies includes five Finovate alums - FiLife, Intuit, Yodlee, Credit.com, and Simplifi. FiLife was not only #1 in finance, but also the only financial company to be ranked in the overall Top 50.

Finovate alumni commanded the top three positions, with Intuit and Yodlee following FiLife. Credit.com was #7 and Simplifi was #9 (full post here).

FiLife and Mint Top Finovate Alumni Traffic Chart

FiLife also has the highest website traffic among Finovate alums with more than 2.7 million visitors. Mint was second with 1.7 million. FiLife and Mint were also the fastest-growing alumni sites, gaining 2.6 million and 612,000 visitors respectively over the previous year.

And the zero-60 awards go to ThreatMetrix and Home-Account who both went from zero to nearly 200,000 unique visitors, a phenomenal amount of traffic for a financial company in their first year (full post here).

Firethorn App Provides Mobile Access to More Than 3,700 Financial Institutions

Firethorn has updated its mobile banking app to allow consumers to access accounts at more than 3,700 U.S. financial institutions. Expanding beyond its current list of integrated banking partners brings the company's app to a wider range of consumers.

Since its mobile app interfaces with existing online banking systems, Firethorn can provide consumers with mobile banking even when their bank doesn't support it. The app also gives users the ability to access account information from multiple institutions from within a single interface (full post here).

Jawalla Adds Skype and Twitter Alerts to its Online Banking Platform

Jwaala has added Twitter and (in what we believe to be a first) Skype alerting capabilities to its MoneyTracker BOB (Better Online Banking) platform. The addition gives Jwaala's clients the ability to offer consumer alerts through channels already familiar to their customers.

Alert systems are important to financial institutions because they provide personalized information to customers where and when they most need it. Expanding its alert capabilities helps Jwaala differentiate itself from competing platforms (full post here).

Last October, Vantage Credit Union launched one of the most novel banking services of 2009 (or ever for that matter), transactional banking through Twitter direct messaging (see note 1). The CU earned our OBR Best of the Web designation for its creativity.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear the service has gained much traction yet. The 103,000-member St. Louis, MO-based CU has 322 Twitter followers on its public feed and about 200 on its protected TweetMyMoney feed where the t-banking takes place (Note: Updated per comment). The majority of public feed followers are analysts, bloggers, and other credit unions.

But Vantage's Twitter move isn't about number of users. It's about keeping its brand relevant with its social networking members. And splashing Twitter across your homepage is a great way to do that (see screenshot below).

Now Vantage is back at it, partnering with Finovate-alum, Geezeo to offer state-of-the-art online personal financial management (press release). It will be fun to see what VCU EVP Eric Acree, a Filene i3 member, does with the Geezeo platform. I think it's safe to say that they will put a novel spin on PFM.   

VCU is Geezeo's fourth white-label credit union client; the other three are Stanford Federal Credit Union (previous post, note 1), Alliant Credit Union, and 1st Advantage FCU. The company is also working with 1st Mariner Bank (updated March 1 per comments).

Vantage CU continues to promote its Twitter features on its homepage
(26 Feb. 2010)

Notes:
1. Stanford FCU's website still says Geezeo-powered MyMo is "coming soon" (link to the Oct. 31, 2009, dated announcement), but the link to the new service has been pulled from the SFCU homepage. 
2. For more info, see our Online Banking Report: Leveraging Twitter (May 2009)

Blippy has been one of the more controversial financial entrants in the past few years. Observers have called it the "end of privacy as we know it," a way to take "oversharing to a dizzying new level," and a "great tool for phishers." And those are just the people who like it.

Blippy, a kind of Twitter meets Yodlee service, allows users to stream their purchase activity to the startup's website. Users can choose to publish data from credit and debit cards, bank accounts, and/or directly from purchase activity at ecommerce-partners sites (see list below). It's the ecommerce transaction stream that provides the richest data describing the actual product purchased or rented rather than just a dollar total.

For example, here's an entry from @Julia who's connected her Amazon account directly to Blippy (note 1)  As you can see the Amazon purchases are shown in detail and one of the items, a giraffe teether, has elicited a question/comment from a friend (highlighting ours):

In comparison, credit card transactions list only the merchant name and not what was purchased. However, Blippy allows users to annotate their transactions to add that detail, as you can see in the following entry. 

One of the most common ways Blippy is used is to stream media consumption via iTunes and Netflix. Here are the three Netflix movies on their way to @crobertsjr:

The Palo Alto-based startup received a $1.6 million angel round in January 2010 from Ron Conway, Jason Calacanis, Twitter's Evan Williams, Sequoia Capital, Charles River Ventures, and others. 

How it works
I got my first taste of Blippy after it opened to the public on Jan. 14. It's simple to get started, calling for just an email address, screenname and password. You also have the option of finding friends using your email address book or choosing from a list of 13 suggested people including Blippy founder Philip Kaplan (@PUD) and interstar Jason Calacanis (@jason).

But you don't even need to register for Blippy to see it in action. There's a live stream on the homepage that anyone can watch (see screenshot below). If Blippy follows the Twitter/Facebook model, they will soon have an API available that will let outside developers tap the data stream.

Usage stats

• Number of beta users: More than 5,000 who streamed $4.5 million worth of transactions
• Most-streamed merchant: Netflix with 54,000 entries
• Most prolific spender (that I ran across): Foo Bar (@foo), who does not identify himself other than CEO at a gaming startup, has linked his business credit card and streamed more than 350 purchases worth more than $300,000 (he's a big online advertiser at Google, MySpace, Facebook).
• Most-followed user: Leo Laporte (@leolaporte), from the Premiere Radio Network, with more than 2,600 followers

Features/benefits

Data sharing within workgroups:

• Ability to share financial transactions within a family, a workgroup, or small business. It would be a great way for financial gatekeepers, e.g., the bookkeeper, CFO, or even board members/investors to keep tabs on company spending (see @foo above).
• Ability to annotate expense streams. Users can add short descriptions to expense items so their followers can see the specifics.
• Ability to discuss/comment on expense items. For example, CFO can ask "why did our Google AdWords expense spike yesterday?" and anyone in the group can comment back with an answer or speculation. We use Yammer in our company for this type of back and forth. 

Product research/social networking:

• Ability to find other customers of the same store
• Ability to discuss product or media purchases with friends or strangers
• Ability to post positive/negative info about purchases (yours or others)
• Ability to find previous purchasers of a product you are considering (currently not supported through search)
• Ability to compare how much people paid for a certain item (not currently supported through search)

Personal financial management:

• Ability to annotate expenses for future reporting (e.g., marking taxable items)
• Store transactions free for as long as Blippy keeps the servers running
• Ability to search own transactions

Financial institution opportunities
1. Card companies and banks should create similar sharing functionality for alerts; especially for small business clients. While public posting of purchase data may never have mass appeal, there are many private uses for real-time transaction data.

2. PFM's should be building this functionality now to get out in front of Mint/Intuit who could simply acquire Blippy and incorporate real-time data flow within weeks. 

3. Once the Blippy API becomes available, banks should tap it to allow their customers to use it directly from within online banking.

Analysis
Whether Blippy lives on as a standalone service is difficult to predict. It depends on whether these capabilities are incorporated into other social networks, particularly, Facebook (note 2) and Twitter. And how fast card issuers move to make real-time transaction info easily available to their own customers.

But regardless of where the company nets out, Blippy should be credited with pioneering real-time financial transaction flow, something every financial institution and ecommerce company will support in the coming years. As a result, we are awarding Blippy an OBR Best of the Web award, our first of 2010 and just the third in the past 14 months (note 3, previous winners).   

Blippy Homepage (14 Jan. 2010 7 PM Pacific)

 Optional sign-in to Gmail, Yahoo or AOL to locate friends on Blippy 

Purchases/activity at these merchants can be automatically tracked
Note: 13 ecommerce merchants currently participate (Amazon, Apple iTunes, Audible, Blockbuster, GoDaddy, GroupOn, Netflix, SeamlessWeb, Stubhub, Threadless, Wine Library, Woot, Zappos)

The Blippy real-time transaction stream
Note: You can choose to watch all activity or just that of the people you are following

Notes:
1. If she hadn't given Blippy her Amazon login info and linked only her credit card, there would be no product detail. It would just show as $80.95 spent at Amazon.
2. Blippy is similar to Facebook's ill-fated Beacon service launched in Nov. 2007. The service was quickly toned down, then eventually dismantled, due to the privacy brouhaha that ensued. Blippy is very different because its users are signing up specifically to share purchase info. 
3. OBR Best of the Web awards, from Online Banking Report, are given periodically to companies that pioneer new online and mobile banking features. It is not an endorsement of the company or product, just recognition for what we believe is an important development. Blippy is the 76th recipient since we began awarding it in 1997. There were just two winners in 2009.

Leave it to Mint to make 140 characters of personal finance chatter sexy. Yesterday, I noticed a link to a new feature called Money Tweets tucked away at the bottom of an account-alert (see inset below; note 1). The site launched in November (press release), but I was all wrapped up in P2P payments at the time (note 2) and never looked at it.

Mint's effort is the best use I've seen of Twitter as a content-creation tool (see screenshot #1, below; note 3). And once established, the site basically runs on autopilot, making it a cost-effective way to bring fresh, real-time content to your customers. 

Money Tweets has five content areas:

• Aggregated tweets from 20+ writers on five subject areas: savings, investing, budgeting, loans, and retirement
• Tweets about Mint using Twitter search
• Tweets from Mint using its Twitter stream
• Tweets from anyone answering the company's Question of the Day such as today's topic, "Is now the time to buy a house?" (upper right in screenshot below)
• Tweets from anyone using keywords taken from personal finance trending topics

Bottom line: Aggregation of the tweets from personal finance experts (with extra credit for adding your own voice to the stream) is a promising tactic for your online marketing plan. But most (all?) financial institutions will want to steer clear of streaming unmoderated tweets from anyone mentioning your company's name. That's going to cause way too many internal headaches as it attracts spam and customer complaints. 

Main page at Mint's Money Tweets (link, 8 Jan. 2010)

Notes:
1. As an aside, Mint's superb graphic design extends even to its email alerts, which look like a sticky note on the screen.
2. For more on the P2P payments market, see our latest Online Banking Report, published earlier this week, Making the Case for Person-to-Person Payments. 
3. For more on using Twitter, see our May report, Connecting to Customers with Twitter.

I love startups. Just when you think you've seen everything, along comes someone doing something that no one would have ever thought of five years ago, or in this case one year ago.

The latest inspiration: Blippy. The service allows you to automatically broadcast your credit or debit card purchases using the Twitter/Facebook model (see screenshot below; note 1).

The first question everyone asks is why? (see comments at TechCrunch) But really, it's not much different than broadcasting personal details via Twitter or your whereabouts via Foursquare, especially if you limit viewing to friends. The founder, serial entrepreneur, Philip Kaplan explains in the TechCrunch interview, that he has one credit card for "social purchases" broadcast on Blippy and another for purchases he prefers to keep private.

Blippy will contain privacy controls that allow users to share everything or keep it within a closed loop of friends. The company also envisions many other privacy controls to turn the service off and on, allow users to approve transactions before publishing, suppress certain merchants, or merchant categories, and so on.

The use cases shown so far are centered around media purchases, for example using it to automatically tweet (blip?) what song or movie you bought on iTunes or social "check ins" where the service lets people know you just bought coffee at Starbucks. But I can see where it would be helpful for spouses to "broadcast" purchases only to each other. Or for a salesperson to broadcast their purchases to their assistant to build expense reports on the fly. 

The service is in closed alpha (only in use by a handful of friends and family, note 2) as the three-person company gears up for a launch. You can follow Kaplan on Twitter (@pud) for more info.

My take: I like the idea of easily sharing purchases with joint-account holders or a bookkeeper. But many (most?) online banking systems and PFMs already allow this through the alerts system. You may want to boost education efforts on this capability.

As for Tweeting about songs downloaded via iTunes, wouldn't most users prefer to maintain more control over that by simply using Twitter or Facebook to directly type a short note? But we know from experience, if there's a way to do something with less effort, it stands a good chance of succeeding.  

I'm not expecting widespread adoption any time soon, but I think there is a market for sharing spending transactions.

Here's something for innovative FIs to consider: Add a "share this" button next to credit/debit card transaction and let users send the info via email, Twitter or Facebook with a couple keystrokes (see inset from FiLife).

I know it sounds far-fetched, but it might be just the thing to make your card stand out with heavy users of social media.

Blippy homepage showing spending stream (16 Dec. 2009)

Note:
1. For more info in Twitter, see our Online Banking Report on the technology published in May.
2. Twitter's Evan Williams is using Blippy as shown in screenshot taken by CNET's Rafe Needleman in his article earlier this week.

The latest Advertising Age profiles the 40 hottest brands in the United States. In the current climate, I wasn't expecting to see a financial brand. But there was a one financial tech company that made the list.

Intuit's TurboTax. It even made the cover photo montage (see inset), although you have to look carefully to see the box laying flat in front (note 1).

Who would have thought tax prep software could be cool? Part of the reason: TurboTax's marketing VP, Andy Young, has been pushing the envelope looking for novel ways to market tax prep services. For example, last year TurboTax was the first company to use a Google program that displayed an Intuit tweet stream on AdSense partner sites such as Facebook, MySpace and VentureBeat (see screenshot below from our previous post). Clickthroughs went to Intuit's Twitter page, rather than its main website (note 2).

And things were clicking last year for TurboTax with 11% growth to 18 million units, despite an 11% decline in boxed-unit sales. The growth driver? Online of course, up 36% year over year.  

Implications for FIs: Banks have driven users to TurboTax for years earning a slice of revenue under affiliate deals. But the potential to provide TurboTax services is set to grow exponentially.   As announced in September's Finovate, tax prep/TurboTax will soon be integrated directly (e.g single signon) in Digital Insight's FinanceWorks. 

VentureBeat home page (9 April 2009)

Note:
1. I might have missed the TurboTax box, because I was too fixated on the Five Guys cup on the left, which is coming to Seattle very soon.
2. For more info on leveraging Twitter, see our report published in May, Online Banking Report: Connecting to Customers with Twitter.

I recently opted in to the Umpqua Bank email list. And even though I'm not a customer, I received an upbeat message this morning from bank president Ray Davis (screenshot below).

This email appears to be geared towards businesses (see the closing line below). And that makes sense because I'd recently been looking into its business social network (note 1). But the message is on-target for consumers as well.

The well-written 185-word letter covers three main topics:

• A cautiously optimistic message about the overall economy
• Some tangible evidence (new banking division, new lending teams, new capital, and 20,000 hours of community service) that the bank is a forward-moving survivor
• Reassurances to customers that they were well-capitalized and moving closer to repaying TARP money

The tone was completely soft sell. There is a link to its online switch kit at the bottom and links to its LocalSpace business social network and Twitter feed (note 2) on the right. It's more "we're in this together" than sales pitch and closes with this wonderful line:

As we wrap up 2009 and look ahead, I encourage you to commit to the spirit of recovery and take action that positions you for the future.

We recommend that every other well-capitalized bank and credit union send a similar message before the holidays. We are about to move into the annual "year in review" exercise in the media, and this year's 100+ U.S. bank failures will be high on the list. Remind your customers, members, employees that you are still a vital member of the community. And that for every financial institution that went under, there were a 100 like yourself that did not. 

Notes:
1. For more info on the small-business market, see our latest Online Banking Report: Small Business Online & Mobile Banking.
2. Umpqua dreamed up one of the most compelling reasons we've seen to follow a bank, or any company for that matter, on Twitter (with the possible exception of the tweeting bakery): updates on its truck handing out free ice cream (Umpqua Twitter page).

I love how the Internet removes friction from everyday tasks, especially payment-related ones. And one of the great success stories of recent years, beginning with Hurricane Katrina relief in August 2005, is how easy it is to make charitable gifts online.

I've used the Red Cross site several times. It gets the job done, but not with the flair and superb user experience of Donors Choose (note 1). 

Thanks to Fred Wilson, blogging at A VC, I contributed to the Social Media Challenge last week and got a first-hand look at Donors Choose. The simple checkout process has three features that I'd not seen before:

• Amazon Payments as a payment choice (along with PayPal, credit card, or check; first screenshot)
• Automated Facebook wall post integration (second screenshot)
• Automated Twitter posting with two options:
  -- allow Donors Choose to Tweet a thank-you to you referencing your @twittername
  -- provides a template for you to make a Tweet from your own Twitter account

If you want to see a state-of-the-art checkout system in action, and support kids in the classroom, check out Donors Choose.

Or if you are looking to add a charitable-giving feature to your banking site for the holidays, you can easily create your own giving page at Donors Choose and run a widget on your website tracking the campaign's progress (see inset). You can choose which projects to support so long as they fall within the nonprofit's mission of "helping students in need."

Donors Choose cart with Amazon Payments and PayPal integration (13 Oct 2009)

Facebook wall post integration
This screen popped up after I checked out

Twitter integration

Donors Choose shout-out page on Twitter (link)
Note: First Tweet was Sep 29. Have done 342 since then (through 13 Oct 2009).

Note:
1. My first donation via Amazon Payments failed because I accidentally used a canceled credit card number. And evidently there is a bit of a bug in the feedback loop to the Donors Choose site. I got an error message, but when I clicked "next" to re-enter the payment, the site transferred me out to the thank-you page and I was unable to go back and re-do the transaction. I had to start all over again, and now the site shows that I've made two donations instead of one. 

In 2006, we predicted that every major bank and credit union would someday have a blog (note 1). That prediction was looking downright awful until Twitter came along. The popular, and much-hyped service, is part blog, part social network, and part text-messaging.

Financial institutions have embraced Twitter much faster than blogging because it's low cost, drop-dead simple to implement, and relatively cost-effective to staff and manage. Our good friend, Christophe Langlois, who has been tracking social media implementations at Visible-Banking for several years, has identified 120 financial institution blogs worldwide. In comparison, Christophe is tracking more than 700 Twitter accounts. Similarly, Jeffry Pilcher's exhaustive Twitter directory at The Financial Brand lists about 600 Twitter accounts in use by financial institutions.

Vantage CU takes the Twitter plunge
Although Twitter can successfully be used as a simple one-way broadcast medium (i.e., microblog), it's also a powerful two-way and group communication service (note 2). Wesabe, in 2008, and Xpenser, earlier this year, were the first online PFMs to leverage Twitter for posting transaction info to user accounts. But St. Louis, Missouri-based Vantage Credit Union took that one step further by allowing users not only to query their accounts, but also to move money between them.

At the core, Vantage CU's Twitter service is little different than hundreds of SMS/text-message mobile-banking services already in use around the world. But for Twitter users, it allows account queries from anywhere a Twitter client is loaded: smartphone, laptop, or desktop (note 3).   

How it works
Vantage CU posted videos showing how it works. But if you are a Twitter user, you can skip the tutorial. You'll understand right away: After signing up for the service at Vantage (inset), simply follow the CU on Twitter (@myvcu) and send them a direct message whenever you want to see your balance, recent transactions, or to initiate a funds transfer.

While the process is relatively intuitive for Twitter users, the command-code language limits the usefulness. The results look like a throwback to the DOS command line circa 1985 (see first screenshot below). It would be much simpler if the CU offered plain English commands and account nicknames, e.g., "transfer $500 from wifechecking to mychecking" instead of "#trans f9 t0". Ideally, the CU would support short codes for its power users and plain English commands for everyone else.

That said, it's pretty simple to remember how to make a checking account balance inquiry, "#bal 9" (9 is the code for checking), which is the primary way the service will be used.

Website implementation
Few members will actually use Twitter banking, at least initially. The main reason to embrace Twitter is for the publicity and brand value, especially when you are first.  Vantage takes full advantage of its first-mover position, placing a headline on its homepage, along with a Twitter feed directly below.

Other things Vantage CU does right:

• Posted four how-to videos (although, the CU needs to choose a faster host for the videos because the Screencast-based videos run way too slow)
• Posted FAQs, instructions, and screenshots
• Wrote a blog post about the new service
• Proactively reached out to bloggers resulting in great initial coverage (Financial Brand, Everything CU, and Currency Marketing) which can help bring mainstream press coverage later
• Allows users to subscribe to the Twitter feed via RSS (directly from the CU's homepage)

Analysis
The PR value alone should more than justify the expense of Vantage CU's Twitter service. And if Twitter continues to work its way into the fabric of consumers' daily lives, the service could attract a decent following.

In keeping with our 10-year tradition of recognizing new online "firsts," we are awarding Vantage a 2009 Best of the Web award (note 4) for being the first in the world with full-service Twitter banking.

Vantage Credit Union homepage featuring new Twitter service (5 Oct 2009)

Notes:
1. See our Online Banking Report: Bank 2.0 (Nov. 2006).
2. For more info, see our Online Banking Report: Leveraging Twitter (May 2009)
3. However, text-messaging users would likely prefer to make balance inquiries directly from their phone's SMS function, rather than taking the time to open the Twitter app or website. The most likely user is someone already using Twitter who decides to do a quick banking inquiry while Tweeting. 
4. OBR Best of the Web awards are given periodically to companies that pioneer new online and mobile banking features. It is not an endorsement of the company or product, just recognition for what we believe is an important development. Vantage Credit Union is the 75th recipient since we began awarding it in 1997.

We just uploaded our latest Online Banking Report.
It will be mailed to subscribers next week. It's also available online here. There's no charge for current subscribers; others may access it immediately
for US$595.

---------------------------------------------------------

Connecting to Customers with Twitter
The comprehensive guide to Twitter for financial institutions

84 pages (published 25 May 2009)

Twitter is everywhere these days (note 1). Those who use it think it's the best thing since the invention of email. Those who don't, think it's just another Internet fad, enjoying its 15 minutes of fame before flaming out with only a Wikipedia entry to remember it by. 

The reality: No one knows exactly how it will play out, but it's something likely in between those two extremes.   

We are not surprised Twitter has taken off as a social connector. It's a lot like other extremely popular communication methods: email, texting, and instant messaging. The rise of MySpace, Facebook and other social networks has paved the way.

However, what's surprising is that Twitter is actually a surprisingly effective, and extremely cost-effective, way for companies to engage online with customers and prospects (see Wachovia example in the inset).

Numbering more than 200 in the United States alone, there are already more financial institutions using Twitter than any other so-called social network. Most have started in the last month or two (see previous coverage). 

In this report (abstract), guest author Jeffry Pilcher (note 2), a branding and marketing guru who recently launched his own brand consultancy, ICONiQ, tells you exactly what you should and shouldn't do with Twitter. He was an early adopter of the tool, and an expert on harnessing its power.

The report includes:

• An overview of Twitter terminology and how the service works
• Advice on how to develop a successful Twitter strategy and
  avoid common pitfalls
• Explanations and examples of the different ways
  financial institutions are using Twitter 
• A step-by-step guide on how to implement a Twitter strategy
  and navigate the "Twittersphere," including explanations of
  how to create and customize a Twitter profile and presence

Notes:
1. USA Today even had a story on the front of the Money section two weeks ago, entitled, "Banks try social networking, jump on Twitter wagon"

2. Jeffry Pilcher blogs at The Financial Brand and frequently tweets here. He maintains a comprehensive listing of banks and credit unions on Twitter here.

I've gradually come around to Twitter as both a communications and research tool. A year ago it could have been dismissed as a niche platform for a few hundred thousand hyper-social geeks. But now that adoption has tipped, with 14 million users last month (see chart), the power of the network is opening up new opportunities.

My favorite: Tweeting bakeries (note 1). A British company, Poke, has developed a little box that sits behind the counter at a bakery.  Whenever a new batch of rolls or pastries is ready to serve, the baker turns a dial to the specific item and presses a button. That automatically sends a pre-programmed Tweet to the bakery's followers. It's called, appropriately, BakerTweet.

Bank opportunities: Unless you merge operations with a bakery (maybe not such a bad idea), financial institutions have nothing nearly as exciting to Twitter about. However, there are useful items a branch could broadcast to its followers:

• When the drive-thru lane was empty (or vice versa)
• When branch queues have disappeared (or vice versa)
• When platform officers are available
• When specific specialists are available in the branch (e.g., home loan officer, small business banker, investment specialist)
• When certain popular employees are working (could be tweeted to just the followers of that person)
• Branch special offers
• Local community events and specials

And if you really want to gain some global recognition, enable payments for the baked goods via Twitter (see TwitPay). For example, users could respond back to the bakery's tweet with:

@bakerytweet hold 2 chocolates pay $2.45 via @twitbank

Assuming users were registered at BakeryTweet and Twitbank, that's all it would take to order and pay for two warm rolls (note 2).

Notes:
1. Kudos to Springwise for finding this idea here. 
2. Yes, there are fraud, privacy and reliability issues to work through, but as long as purchases are kept under a certain floor, the exposure would be minimal. 
3. See also the Harvard Business article last week (9 April 2009) by John Sviokla, Twitter: A Marketer's Duct Tape.

Intuit's TurboTax unit has long pushed the envelope in promoting its brand through social networks. Its Vanilla Ice YouTube promotion two years ago (previous post) is still one of my favorite financial user-generated-content (UGC) promotions.

But UGC promotions take a lot of planning and support, and unless they go viral, they may generate just a few thousand views and little new business (see note 1).

Intuit's use of a real-time (note 2) Twitter feed in a banner ad (see at VentureBeat, screenshot below) is so much better than a YouTube promo in a number of ways:

• Much more cost effective: It costs Intuit virtually nothing to post its Twitter stream to VentureBeat (other than the advertising expense). Intuit is already broadcasting on its Twitter channel for other reasons. This is just a repositioning of that content.
• When Intuit answers a question within its stream (@ replies), it creates moderated "user-generated micro-content." The newness of the content creates more interest and attention than a static banner ad.
• The company jumps on the Twitter-bandwagon, a good way to generate press mentions.

Bottom line: This approach works only if you are creating an interesting stream of Tweets. TurboTax, during the early-April tax return mania, is a great example. Other financial companies can mimic the approach, and you'll probably want to run a contest or do something innovative to keep your Tweets lively. 

VentureBeat home page (9 April 2009)

Landing page at Intuit's TurboTax Twitter page @turbotax
(link, 9 April 2009)

Notes:
1. But if you have a huge budget, the payoff can be great. According to Jeffry Pilcher's Financial Brand post today, Barclaycard's Waterslide promo, referenced on the UK homepage, generated more than a million views on YouTube. Barclay's TV ad is here, the YouTube page is here and the Web-based game, here.

2. It's a "speeded-up" real-time feed. The banner ad cycles through the five most-recent Tweets (all of which were posted yesterday). Each one is on-screen for several seconds, making it look like there is much activity. 

I've mostly just observed the Twitter phenomenon, following a few people and seeing how banks and credit unions are using it (see my previous post for financial institutions on Twitter). However, I'd not fully embraced Twitter either as a publishing device or research source. The 300 or so RSS feeds, emails and news items that cross my desk each day seemed like plenty of intelligence to sift through.

But now, I'm reconsidering my priorities after learning about an interesting new alt-payment company BillMyParents from Twitter activity (see notes 1, 2).

How it works: BillMyParents is a new service from IdeaEdge's Socialwise (press release). The service is primarily designed for kids to shop online. They select what they want, then at checkout, redirect the bill to their parents via an email alert to PC or mobile phone. Parents login and complete the payment process at their convenience using MasterCard, Visa, Discover Card (no American Express; see third screenshot below). Card info can be stored for one-click future approvals.

The company charges a $0.50 transaction fee for each purchase. But like PayPal, the real money will be made when the company pushes purchase transactions through the ACH system.  

Currently, BillMyParents is selling prepaid gift cards from its site as a proof-of-concept. I tested it yesterday and everything seemed to work as described (see second screenshot below).

The opportunity: The service reminds me of the unmet need that PayPal filled nine years ago. Purchasing at eBay was a major hassle due to the lack of online payment capabilities. Kids have similar problems when trying to buy things online.

The service could also be adapted to other situations where one party does the shopping but wants someone else to authorize payment such as small businesses, nannies, or even spouses. It could also be used for extra security when the shopping is done in a non-secure environment such as public terminal and payment is redirected to a more secure device, such as your mobile phone.

Like any alternative payment, BillMyParents requires the merchant to add the option to its ecommerce platform and consumers to set up accounts. Both of those are time-consuming and face the chicken-and-egg dilemma, i.e., it's hard to attract merchants without a substantial user base while its difficult to add users without merchants.

Bottom line: This is a winning idea. The massive discretionary purchasing power of teens and pre-teens is a tempting target in this difficult retail environment. And financial institutions, or their payment partners (e.g. Visa, MasterCard), looking to differentiate themselves with the youth market, could jumpstart the program. Or more likely, PayPal and/or Amazon will dive in, either acquiring BillMyParents outright, or building their own version(s).  

BillMyParents homepage after setting up an account (26 March 2009)
Note: Split login screen for kids (left) and parents (right)

Proof-of-concept: Gift card purchase (26 March 2009)

Parent's approval screen (26 March 2009)

Notes:
1.  Thanks to Frederic Baud (@fredericbaud) who was the first in my network to Tweet about BillMyParents; and to Glenbrook's Scott Loftesness (@sjl) who's retweet is actually what caught my eye.

2. BillMyParents appears to have grabbed its Twitter page name (@billmyparents), but it's not yet active.

If you haven't been following Twitter the last few months, you may not realize it now has almost eight million monthly unique visitors according to Compete. That's almost double the traffic it had just two months ago and a nearly a nine-fold gain from a year ago.

To put that traffic in perspective, it's more than half that of the NY Times and slightly more than banking giant Wachovia (see Compete chart below).

Banking activity
Financial institutions are pretty new to the micro-blogging platform. In a search today, we found 15 U.S. banks and 22 credit unions with active Twitter feeds (see notes 1, 6-8). There were also and nine international banks for a total of 46.

See the table below for the non-inclusive list ranked by number of Twitter users that follow the bank's feed (note 2). Wachovia (now owned by Wells Fargo), the only major bank that has promoted Twitter on its main website, leads with 2,000 followers (see previous post on Wachovia's foray on to Twitter).

Opportunity 
Participating in Twitter is a low-cost entry into social media that can actually help save a customer relationship or three. Compared to blogging, it is much less labor intensive. It's also less of a marketing platform given the 140-character limit in posts. But in the current environment, perhaps less truly is more. By all means, find a gung-ho Facebook devotee in your bank and let him or her get you into the Tweeting game.

Table: Banks and Credit Unions using Twitter (updated 16 March 2009)

Source: Online Banking Report, 13 March 2009 (see notes 6,7,8)

Notes:
1. To be considered active, the bank or credit union had to have set up a Twitter account, customized it with its logo, have made more than 1 update or "Tweet," and have at least 10 followers. 
2. This is not a complete list. With a few exceptions, we only looked for financial institutions with "bank" or "credit union" in their name.
3. Wells Fargo's Twitter page says it will be launching soon.
4. Twitter URL = www.twitter.com/<shown below>
5. For more on bank blogging, see our Online Banking Report on Banking 2.0
6. List and totals updated with ING Direct and First Federal on 16 March 2009
7. Searched on "CU" and found eight more credit unions on 17 March 2009. Thanks Gabriel Garcia.
8. Added NAB's Ubank from comments, unsure why it didn't show up on "bank" search

In my pre-Super Bowl post about E*Trade's "baby" franchise, I wasn't aware of several other ways the company is using social media to increase awareness:

• Baby's Twitter page (screenshot #1 below and note 1;): This is a new effort launched Jan. 22, the same day the 2009 outtakes clip was released into the wild via YouTube and press release. The baby Tweeted a few times on the days leading up to the game, and a few since, but the funniest part was the 26 game-day Tweets that actually incorporated real-time events into the script. There are only 650 followers today, but that's up 150 since Monday morning -- not a bad start for a low-cost marketing tool. 
• Baby's Facebook page (screenshot #2 below): Also launched around Jan. 22, the E*Trade baby Facebook page already has 3,825 fans. The commercials are posted along with a photo album. 

The E*Trade homepage has also been used before and after the game to take advantage of interest in the baby ads. The baby dominated E*Trade's homepage the day after the big game (see screenshot #3 below of the Monday morning homepage). 

Lessons for financial institutions
You don't have to be a Super Bowl advertiser to use social media to support your advertising campaigns. Banks and credit unions of any size can use these relatively low-cost tactics.

Here are the eight key support elements to consider for your next campaign:

   1. Press release
   2. Blog entries
   3. Facebook page
   4. Twitter stream
   5. YouTube page
   6. Homepage placement
   7. Landing page
   8. Google keyword buys (see screenshot #4 below)

1. E*Trade baby Twitter page (link, 3 Feb. 2009)

2. E*Trade Facebook page (link, 3 Feb. 2009)

3. E*Trade homepage the morning after Super Bowl XVIII (2 Feb. 2009)

4. E*Trade is running Google ads on searches for "etrade baby"
(3 Feb. 2009, 6PM Pacific)

Note:
1. Thanks Jeffry Pilcher for the Twitter tip.

2. See our Online Banking Report: Bank 2.0 for more ideas.

Taking a page from Wells Fargo's playbook, Wachovia has ventured into social media, giving Twitter a try (see screenshot below and previous Twitter coverage here). The bank has sent 94 updates (aka Tweets) via its Twitter page since it began Aug. 18 and has amassed 340 followers.

But more importantly, they are leveraging the minimal customer-support expense to support Twitter (see note 1) with a nifty badge on its Contact Us page (see inset and screenshot below). That little bit of online marketing, demonstrating the Web-savviness of the banking colossus, is probably worth 1000x whatever goodwill they earn actually talking to customers via Twitter.

Analysis
I'll admit, I was expecting the usual corporate marketing-speak. But Wachovia is actually using the medium very well. So far, the bank has provided a realistic mix of low-key promotional items such as the following "Ike update" with real customer service response (see second example below).

Example 1 (earlier today): Promotional Tweet today mentioning the bank's Hurricane Ike response with link to more info, e.g., <tinyurl.com/4vbbyn>: 

Example 2 (this morning): Responding to a customer complaint: 

This last message is directed back to a customer who posted a complaint about Wachovia in his public Twitter stream. Wachovia could have sent it privately, but they elected to respond publicly.

This is surprisingly bold, considering that the bank risks elevating the issue. For example, anyone following Wachovia's updates can click on bastille71's username and see that she is upset about a $250 overdraft charge. It's unlikely anyone outside bastille71's friends would have known about that had Wachovia not responded publicly via Twitter.

But anyone who really believes in social media will argue that the bank has far more to gain by demonstrating real commitment to solving customer problems.

Looking further at the above example, bastille71 (inset) has 135 followers on Twitter, her own blog, and who knows how many friends on Facebook. What are the chances that if Wachovia ends up refunding her $250, bastille71 (aka Miss Rehobeth) will write it up in her blog, Twitter it, and even talk about it with her co-workers and friends? 

And if you need more ROI than that, Wachovia has already received a good payback on its Twitter investment (note 1) with a nearly full-page article in American Banker last week during an otherwise not-so-positive news cycle for banks. In addition, the customer service innovation made several blogs and of course the bank's been Twittered about in a positive way.

Note:
1. There's no real cost to using Twitter other than staffing it with a social-media-savvy customer-service rep and someone in marketing/PR to look over his or her shoulders. 

Wesabe's latest feature, the ability to update your account via Twitter, isn't likely to find too many users in the short-term. However, it's a great marketing move that could see a fair amount of uptake over time (see note 1).

Although there are less than 2 million Twitter users, the company is currently white hot, one of the most talked about Internet companies (see Google trends below, which shows Twitter search volume is 7x or 8x that of "phishing"). So why not draft off Twitter's hype, as long as it's not too costly?

How it works
After logging in to Wesabe and providing your Twitter name, you then simply send a private or public message (aka Tweets) to Wesabe's Twitter account. Wesabe then adds the expense to your cash-tracking account. You can include merchant name, expense categories, and descriptions to the transaction (see examples below).

Most common: Update via private message (no one else will see)

Less likely: Update via public message (your friends will receive it, and if you have an open feed, anyone could see it)

Google Trends for Twitter vs. phishing (9 Aug 2008)

Note:
1. Updating accounts via text message and email has much wider appeal. It's one of the recommended items in our personal finance feature set. See our Online Banking Report on Personal Finance Features for more info.

Last week, I may have jumped the gun when I thought I'd found a bank using Twitter (post here). It's pretty apparent that E*Trade is not officially involved with that Twitter account.

But the ever diligent Ann-Marie Murphy was quick to add to the comments that her company, Quicken Loans, is *really* using Twitter to support its Quizzle personal finance site (see Quizzle coverage here). Beginning Feb. 22, the mortgage lender has posted 52 updates through last week (those would be called "tweets" if you are a real geek). That's about one per day, a good steady flow, without inundating the follower. 

Here's Murphy's rationale for using Twitter:

We've found it to be a great way to chat with our site visitors, get honest and helpful feedback to make the site better and give interesting home-related tips to followers. I especially like the instantaneous feedback. Ask a question, get a bunch of answers from folks who enjoy helping others.

Now this is what a real Twitter update stream looks like, complete with custom design. Nice.

I was searching Twitter today to see if any major brokerages were using it to reach out to customers. The only hit was E*Trade which is using Twitter to update its Complete Savings Account rates. It seems to be coming from the bank, but it's possible someone else, perhaps an employee or fan, is responsible for the two entries: the first on March 12 announcing a 3.45% yield and then on April 1 when the rate dropped to 3.01% (note 1).

Regardless of who's responsible, it makes sense to use the new channel for outbound communications. If nothing else, the 90 seconds spent creating those two entries have already generated a favorable mention in this blog. 

For those of you not familiar with Twitter, it's a communications tool that allows users to post short (140 characters max) updates about what they are doing, what they are thinking, or anything else. Unless the user chooses to make their updates private, anyone can read them, just like a blog post. That's why Twittering is sometimes called micro-blogging. But it's more like "broadcast instant messaging" for most people who's musing will be seen by just a handful of friends, family and/or colleagues.

For more info from an actual Twitter user, read Ron Shevlin's recent post.

Note:

1. I suspect it's an "unofficial" Twitter page because they didn't put APY behind the percentage, although that is spelled out in the short bio section in the upper right, and they are not using the company logo.