Tearsheet

How Current is building a Gen Z brand through influencer marketing

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 12:45:55 GMT

Using celebrities to market a bank isn’t new. What is new, however, is turning to social media influencers to help grow a financial brand.

Influencer marketing is a core marketing program for challenger bank Current. Current banks people living paycheck to paycheck and works with influencers like Kyle and Jade, Kelz Washington, and David Dobrik, who has over 26 million followers on TikTok and has received over 1 billion likes on the social media video platform.

Current recently hit 2 million users.

Spearheading the influencer strategy is Adam Hadi, vice president of marketing. Before he joined Current two years ago, Hadi worked in influencer marketing, consulting with firms like Quidd, Seatgeek, Firework, Joyride, N3twork, Epic Games, and FreshPlanet.

For Current’s Gen Z target audience, social media is the go to channel to market to new users.

“In 2021, when we talk about Gen Z, social media is the only place they’ve ever known to spend their time,” he said at last week’s Acquire Conference hosted by Tearsheet.

Hadi, who also won Tearsheet’s Marketer of the Year award, says that marketing to Gen Z is different than the usual marketing techniques used to target older people. “It’s more about the messaging and the creative that you’re putting out there,” he said.

Current works with influencers like Dobrik to help spread its message of inclusivity — about a financial institution that cares about its customers.

@current
Glad to see these beautiful smiles this season Happy Holidays : @daviddobrik ##davidsholiday ##holidays ##currentcommunity ##happyholidayseason
♬ original sound – Current

Current’s Hadi draws from five years of experiences he had using influencers to market casual games. But finance requires a different level of messaging — one that builds trust between the product and the customer, using influencers to connect the loop.

“You don’t need to trust Candy Crush, right? But with something like banking, something like money, especially when you’re talking about the demographic that we’re banking, the trust component can’t be understated,” he said.

Done right and a brand can build a steady funnel of new users who believe in its messaging. Influencer marketing gone wrong can feel just like an advertisement. That can be damaging to the value of a brand.

For Gen Z, advertising can be seen as a negative signal. This demographic understands that anyone can run an ad on a TV network or Facebook or Twitter, but getting an endorsement of someone they look up to seems much more legitimate.

“Gen Z — more than anyone — has come to mistrust ad placements,” he said.

Current targets Americans overlooked by traditional banks. It uses its influencers to explain that a bank can help to fix systemic problems.

“We’re for the other half of the country. These are our service industry workers, hourly workers, gig economy workers, primarily young people. We’re very much focused in on Gen Z — fixing, fixing, fixing and solving their problems,” he said.

When determining which influencers to work with, Hadi recommends working backwards, beginning with the audience: where they’re located and where they spend their time. A boomer audience should be reached on TV. Likewise, if you have a younger audience, you should be reaching them via social media.

Once you’ve determined where your targets are, Hadi recommends asking what and who the audience cares about.

“Current has such a broad audience — it’s across all of Gen Z. That allows us to go very mainstream. It’s not like we need to stick to a finance influencer, or some special niche category, or anything like that. We go basically as broad as you can,” he said.

Few older people have heard of influencer Dobrik, but if you talk to any 20 year old, they would. He’s just ahead of LeBron James and number one in terms of influence among Gen Z.

And like banks with their customers, influencer relationships are built upon trust. Structuring successful programs can’t be reduced to simple algorithms, according to Hadi. “The truth of the matter is that it’s all built on relationships. It’s built on history,” he said. “It’s not transactional. We’re well beyond that actually. The trust is about giving content creators the freedom to create great content and trusting them to do it.”

Hadi feels some influencer brands have become rigid — they learn bad habits like reading promotions directly from a script. That doesn’t cut it. Trust has to push up the content to new levels.

In addition to hiring influential content creators to create content, Current creates its own material for influencers to us. “We’re going to be shooting on site where we’re doing all types of pretty cool stuff to be able to give value back to both influencesr and the fans. It’s a little bit of a win-win-win situation,” he said.

Hadi feels that there’s a lot of scale to influencer marketing. Dobrik, for example, has 50 million to 70 million subscribers across platforms.

“We’re not talking small numbers here.”

Cheat Sheet: What it means when the Federal Reserve goes down

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 12:45:42 GMT

Yesterday, Federal Reserve systems that execute millions of financial transactions a day were disrupted by what appeared to be some sort of internal snafu. The systems were down for about four hours and are used for lots of different purposes, including payroll, tax refunds, and interbank transfers.

“Our technical teams have determined that the cause is a Federal Reserve operational error,” the Fed said on Wednesday on its website. “The Federal Reserve Banks have taken steps to help ensure the resilience of the Fedwire and NSS applications, including recovery to the point of failure.”

What happened

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‘The financial industry was not built to serve the needs of melanated people because we were ...

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 12:45:00 GMT

Earlier this month, Visa partnered with challenger bank First Boulevard for its Crypto API pilot program which is expected to launch later this year. First Boulevard is focused on building generational wealth for the Black community and will be the first to pilot Visa’s new range of crypto APIs.

The pilot will allow First Boulevard customers to buy, sell and store crypto assets administered by Anchorage, the first federally chartered digital assets bank. The soft launch underscores the first stage roll out of Visa’s crypto APIs before they are made available for Visa clients to integrate crypto features within their own products.

The pilot program marks the latest step in Visa’s digital currency strategy which is about expanding Visa’s role as a “network of networks” and a partner of choice for fintechs.

“The idea is to help fintechs and financial institutions that lack a crypto offering to build one,” said Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa. “Providing access to crypto features within their core banking products and mobile apps can help financial institutions attract, retain and further engage their customers. Additionally, the program could help fintechs and our financial institution clients compete with crypto exchanges and create additional revenue streams.”

Visa’s global payments network currently supports around 70 million merchants and the company has partnered with 35 crypto platforms, such as Coinbase, over the years.

For Visa, its digital currency strategy could be about more than just testing the waters — for some industry participants that are strong proponents of blockchain, it could be an existential move.

“Visa sees the writing on the wall. Digital currencies, particularly stablecoins, will be the dominant currency format in the next 10 years,” said William Quigley, a cryptocurrency fund manager at Magnetic, a blockchain and crypto investment firm.

“Every global financial network will have to embrace blockchain technology or be disrupted by it.”

Visa’s partnership with First Boulevard is part of the payment provider’s diversity and inclusion strategy for increasing financial empowerment opportunities for Black Americans and other underrepresented minorities. The Kansas-based First Boulevard is committed to building an inclusive financial infrastructure for Black America and prioritizes the financial needs of black women.

“Visa is the payments industry leader and we wanted to ensure the Black community had access to the best solutions available,” said Donald Hawkins, president of First Boulevard. “From the beginning of our conversations with Visa, it was clear they were distinctly aligned with our vision of bridging the gap between assets like Bitcoin and our community.”

In addition to First Boulevard, Visa recently partnered with Black-owned banks CapWay and One United Bank that cater to the financial and business needs of the Black community.

It also partnered with Urban One, a media company that primarily targets Black American consumers with its rewards-based debit card, One VIP, that donates redeemed points for cash back or for donations to Black charities.

Black consumers in America represent $1.4 trillion in buying power but the average Black American family holds less than 15 percent of the wealth of the average white American family. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, if the current racial wealth divide is left unaddressed, the median black household wealth will hit $0 by 2053, in contrast to the median white household wealth which would climb to $137,000 by 2053.

“The current financial industry was not built to serve the needs of melanated people because we were excluded from its construction,” said Asya Bradley, co-founder of First Boulevard.

Are you a Confident Money Manager or a Laid-back Balancer? Marcus by Goldman Sachs launches a ...

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 12:45:56 GMT

Goldman Sachs’ retail banking platform Marcus recently partnered with the Myers-Briggs Company as part of its financial empowerment initiatives to help consumers make better financial decisions. The partnership created a Financial Personality Quiz to help people uncover their financial management habits and behaviors to pursue sound financial decisions.

“Through this collaboration, we’re able to combine our insights, the Myers-Briggs team on human psychology and personality preferences, and Marcus’ expertise on the financial side, to raise awareness and help more individuals design an approach that works for them,” said Jennifer Overbo, the vice president of global brand and marketing at the Myers-Briggs Company.

The Myers-Briggs Company is one of the largest business psychology providers in the world and is known for pioneering the MBTI, a widely used personality assessment tool. The partnership extends Marcus’ consumer focused imperative of helping customers take greater control of their finances.

Marcus Insights which was launched last year, is a personal finance management tool that allows customers to track their financial accounts in addition to monitoring their spending data highlights.

“This is part of our aim to demonstrate what a modern consumer bank is, rooted in our transparent, customer-centric products, tools and resources,” said Sonali Divilek, head of product at Marcus by Goldman Sachs.

“We want to give consumers the ability to manage their personal finances holistically.”

The four different financial personality types categorized by the quiz are defined as follows:

Confident Money Manager

Confident Money Managers are long term financial planners and thinkers who are confident in their financial management skills and are likely to stick to their long term budgeting and management goals.

Short-term Strategist

Short-term Strategists are careful planners when it comes to their finances but they struggle with long term and detailed planning. They are confident in their financial capabilities but face challenges in fleshing out details during the budgeting process.

Value-based Planner

Value-based Planners prioritize financial decisions based on what’s important to them and view money as a means to contribute towards helping people and causes, as opposed to as a source of accumulating personal wealth.

Laid-back Balancer

These personality types are not focused on long term financial planning and make financial decisions based on their emotions. They view long term financial planning as less significant in comparison to other facets of their lives. They also view money in terms of its application – how it can be used and who it can be used for.

The quiz helps people learn which category they best fit into and highlights the potential strengths and blind-spots associated with their financial planning style.

“We wanted to work with the Marcus team because we’re interested in finding new ways to better help people increase their self-awareness and, through increased self-awareness, lead better lives,” said Overbo.

“We have a variety of assessments that help people understand how they work and interact with others, and financial management is an important aspect of our daily lives. Increased self-awareness can help people make better decisions and build a more successful money management approach.”

Brex’s proposed bank is a setback for Revolut’s team building in the U.S.

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 12:45:50 GMT

Brex wants to be a bank.

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‘Making the browser and a superior wallet work better, together’: Opera’s Krystian Kolondra

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 12:45:17 GMT

A few years back, there was a race to embed payments into the browser. It makes sense, too. Most people who access the web through their computers use a browser to shop and bank. While the noise has died down, the Opera browser has continued to work on integrating financial services. Opera has 380 million users globally with 50 million active European users.

The firm is launching an app that gives its users cashback on purchases made through partner websites via the Opera browser. Users can also use the new app to open a current account and get a virtual debit card to shop online and off. The firm plans to offer savings, credit and investment opportunities in the future.

Joining us on the podcast today is Krystian Kolondra, EVP Browsers & EEA Fintech at Opera.

Tearsheet Podcast · ‘Making the browser and a superior wallet work better, together’: Opera’s Krystian Kolondra

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The following excerpts were edited for clarity.

Opera’s footprint

Opera started as a browser company. And we have more than 380 million users currently, out of which 75 million were added in the last three years. We’re a growing company — with $170 million annual revenue and profitable. And we are using the browser as a platform to kickstart new initiatives and new businesses.

One of these businesses is Opera News that already has more than 200 million users as part of the application. And we have also launched several ecommerce or fintech related initiatives in emerging markets.

Fintech in the browser

If you think about browsers, people use the browser to fix their online errands. They use it for reading news, banking, connecting with others, but most importantly, for shopping. So that ecommerce is our focus and integrated ecommerce, especially, taking into account privacy, is something that actually aligns really well with some of Opera’s values and its vision.

The browser is exactly the right place. I could imagine, in the near future, browsers going into the financial space and also some financial institutions trying to go into — not necessarily full browsers — but offering ecommerce directly in their applications. I see that already happening. The browser is better positioned for this because people already shop in the browser, people are already there. It is much easier than to take an application and then ask people to change their habits and start shopping in the application.

We’re quite happy because this news is about the new brand, Dify, that includes the ecommerce and payment activities that we want to build around the browser, but also around the digital financial application, the wallet app. We’re launching the product that will support ecommerce in the browser, and offer cashback, giving users the possibility to get this cash back into their digital wallet, and then use this with the card for further payments online and offline — for instance, with Google Pay functionality.

New functionality

This is, first of all, about convenience, and how simple it is and how secure and privacy oriented that is. Our browser will come with something we call shopping mode, which means that while you shop, we limit access of extensions in a browser. Many people are not aware that lots of extensions scan or gather data from what we’re doing online. They can learn a lot about us. We will give the choice to the user in a shopping mode to limit these extensions — almost like a VPN for regular connectivity, right? You’re in the shopping mode, it’s yours. So that’s the first thing.

Second thing is that we’re making it easy and convenient for you to get cashback or learn about new promotions. Who would not like to get a huge discount on a purchase that you’re making, right? We do this automatically. So when you shop, you will see quickly on a particular shop whether you can get an offer or a discount. And then you just do the things you’ve been doing before. But once your cashback is approved, you will get it directly to your Dify wallet, where you will be able to use it the way you want.

Building rewards

We are building our rewards program with partners — we’re working either through partners or through affiliate networks, like similar programs that are on the market. We plan to build the most extensive catalog of global cashback and offers, as we move forward into the future.

Financial services

We’ve always been focused on innovation, ease of use. And that has been a theme for our browser development for years. Many of the things that you see in the browsers today actually were invented by Opera. We want to take this attitude and envision it to the financial world, which means that we’re not just launching cash back in the browser as a first step, but we’re connecting directly with the digital wallet.

And that follows some of the acquisitions that we did last year when we acquired Fjord Bank and Pocosys. They both have licenses, allowing them to operate in Europe. So we start with the EU, the European Economic Area. It’s a huge market, by the way. If you think about ecommerce, it’s more than a $700 billion market, expected to grow double digits in 2021. So it’s the right place to start. And we have more than 50 million users in Europe.

We’ll be offering this digital wallet application with a current account with a MasterCard debit card, and people can use this card for online purchases or with Google Pay for offline purchases. They can also do transfers and in the future, we will be launching more functionality, like consumer finance, management, savings, credit, and investment opportunities. We also aim to have instant cashback, which is one of the hardest types of cashback services today. Normally, you have to wait for a very long time to get your reward — we want to offer it much, much faster than anyone else.

Expansion of financial services

We will start in Europe, and we will be enabling this functionality country by country. Our ambitions are definitely global. So this brand is supposed to be a global fintech brand. We will be going about this in two tracks that make sense together. One is to offer more and better — like comfort and ease of use for users using their financial applications. That could be investments, savings, and other things.

And at the same time, we will make it easier for them to shop online, to keep track of their purchases, and basically get the best offers on the market with cashback.

One thing worth noting is that we’re trying to be at the forefront of what people are doing on the browser side. And already, a few years ago, we launched a cryptocurrency wallet into our browsers. I think we’re really well prepared to bring new functionality to our users.

Announcing Tearsheet’s 2021 Acquire Awards winners

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 12:45:46 GMT

Tearsheet’s Acquire Awards are the financial industry’s top awards program focused on marketing, customer acquisition, and growth. This generation’s financial services and fintech companies are deeply focused on achieving scale, one customer at a time. The Acquire Awards are intended to identify and celebrate the best customer-facing work in financial services.

This year’s award winners featured exceptional marketing campaigns, creative designs, and top talent. The award winners were announced at the end of Tearsheet’s Acquire Conference, held Thursday, February 18th.

The Acquired Awards are sponsored by Burgopak.

The 2021 Acquire Awards winners

Campaign of the Year: Truist’s Live United campaign

Working alongside National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, Truist and United Way delivered a message of hope and unity amid a summer of uncertainty and unrest. While the country was struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic and facing a historic moment for civil rights, Truist and United Way partnered with Amanda Gorman to spread a message of solidarity and hope.

Her poem “Live United” served as a call-to-arms, challenging people all over
the country to come together for the greater good. The message broke from the melancholic and reactionary work flooding the market and inspired the country to take action.

Marketing Team of the Year: Step

The challenger bank Step is turning into a Gen Z marketing powerhouse with a small but mighty team. The firm wants to change the world of teen and family banking to make it more modern, accessible, educational and customer-centric. Four months after launching, Step already has over one million users on its platform. The exponential growth is a result of product market fit and an innovative marketing strategy.

Instead of typical paid marketing, Step leverages content creators to engage teens on popular platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Teens actively post about their favorite Step card features and ask personal finance questions. Step also has a referral program that’s helping to spread the word.

Marketer of the Year: Current’s Adam Hadi

As the challenger bank’s head of marketing, Adam Hadi brings a lot of experience in leveraging influencers to reach a Gen Z audience. Since Hadi joined Current in 2019, the challenger bank now has 2 million users. The challenger bank is fresh off a $131 million Series C fundraise, using influencers as a cornerstone strategy that touches nearly every aspect of marketing, including acquisition, brand and content.

Adam always believed working with influencers was about enabling great content, for mutually beneficial partnerships, and that building relevancy and trust was critical for all brands, but especially in financial services and for Current’s Gen Z members.

Agency of the Year: StrawberryFrog

The agency describes itself as the world’s first Movement Thinking company, working with clients to develop their sense of purpose in the market. StrawberryFrog has partnered with the purpose-driven leadership at Truist Financial. When Covid hit, the agency worked with its client to pivot its strategy in promoting the new brand name of the combined BB&T and SunTrust entity — now the sixth largest bank in the U.S.

The agency worked initially on Truist Cares, a campaign focused on the bank’s work helping out some of the hard-hit communities it serves. StrawberryFrog and Truist combined on the Live United campaign (this year’s Campaign of the Year) which featured National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman delivering a message of solidarity and hope.

Best Customer Unboxing Experience: Studio Blyss’ Credit Suisse Client Experience Toolbox

Zurich-based Studio Blyss developed a multi-part Client Experience Toolbox for Credit Suisse Private Banking and International Wealth Management, which provides Relationship Managers with materials that build, nurture and intensify their relationship with existing and potential clients.

All materials were developed, designed and produced in really high quality – without compromise. As digitalization grows, tactile and physical experiences become more important than ever. Studio Blyss has a focus on Private Banking, where creating unique experiences is even more important and can’t be achieved fully in digital channels.

Best Product Marketing: Shopify Capital

The e-commerce platform solves
complex financial problems for its merchants, including helping them access funding through Shopify Capital.
Shopify Capital is an alternative funding solution that helps businesses respond to the economic effects of the pandemic and build resilience into their operations. In response to COVID-19, Shopify Capital made an additional $200
million in funding available to merchants and expanded to the U.K. and Canada to offer funding to more merchants outside the U.S.

Shopify Capital helps entrepreneurs get the funds they need to grow their businesses. Shopify used case studies with merchants on its platform that highlighted the challenges and opportunities faced by small businesses through this period, providing inspiring stories of SMBs that were making it.

Most Creative Campaign: Varo’s A Bank for All of Us campaign

After receiving the first U.S. national bank charter issued to a fintech, Varo embarked on its first integrated brand campaign, after primarily investing in organic word-of-mouth, radio, and social media last year. The campaign includes Varo’s first broadcast TV ads that aired in select markets during this year’s Super Bowl.

The campaign is anchored in the company’s purpose and ambition: financial opportunity and inclusion for all. The launch phase of the campaign reimagines money and puts modern American consumers at the very core. The campaign highlights the diversity found in communities and features a range of American faces – front and center – on a reimagined $20 bill. The campaign signals Varo’s support for a renewed push to put Harriet Tubman on the face of the $20. The campaign will also see the launch of a Varo Dollar AR filter that allows users to put their own face on the $20 bill.

Best Content Series (B2B): Nuveen’s Income campaign

TIAA’s asset management arm expanded its income focused thought leadership offerings to support client needs in 2020 and 2021.

As part of its Income campaign, Nuveen built on its existing income content series and introduced a more focused thought leadership offering that helps refine Nuveen’s income story to be inclusive of all income-oriented capabilities it offers in both the private and
public markets. The income thought leadership offering began with a strategy of focusing more closely on enhancing the firm’s client engagement with institutional investors in the U.S. as the best choice for income solutions across portfolios of all types.

Best Content Series (B2C): Ally’s The Bright Side featuring Katie Couric

At a time the country was hurting deeply, Ally put together a content series featuring stories of helpers and healers doing good. Ally teamed up with Katie Couric to bring an uplifting content series called “The Bright Side” to spread a little hope and joy to Americans when they needed it most. This series aimed to share the stories of the heroes, the helpers and the people who made COVID & 2020 a little better, at a time when everyone could have used a little taste of the bright side.

Ally created a content series consisting of four videos featuring stories of the helpers and healers doing good in their communities. The stories showcased the best of humanity – wedding surprises, teachers lifting up their community, a service dog handing out medical supplies and a non-profit setting up handwashing stations for the homeless.

‘The transformation of banks into lifestyle brands is the transformation of the card into a ...

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 12:45:40 GMT

As of December 2020, there were 256 active challenger banks worldwide according to data by Exton Consulting.

With so many digital banking solutions, standing out is challenging.

As a solution, many challenger banks are putting extra focus on how they package their cards.

Packaging, it seems, helps challenger banks express their brand’s tone and personality, make users feel special, and turn card activation into a shareable event instead of a mundane chore.

Dane Whitehurst is the creative director at Burgopak. Burgopak is a packaging company that in the past decade has worked closely with challenger banks in finding the best way to uniquely differentiate and present their products. For him, old-fashioned cardboard packaging causes customers to classify their new cards as boring rather than brag-worthy.

A plain envelope doesn’t highlight its content as something desirable. Instead, what’s inside becomes just another item in your home, like a toothbrush or socks — something you use daily, but not something you’d boast about on Instagram.

A unique unpackaging experience, though, can make the user feel like they’re now a part of something special.

“Part of the transformation of banks into lifestyle brands is the transformation of the card into a lifestyle product,” said Whitehurst. “Bank cards are moving from being this thing that’s hidden away in your wallet to being this hugely desirable celebrated object. it’s not something you hide away anymore. It’s something that gets waved around and photographed in countless locations.”

Packaging can also help challenger banks present the use of their banking products as a trendy experience, rather than just another way to pay for stuff.

“I think a big part of the reason behind why these companies became hugely successful is because there were some very clever people in marketing who fundamentally rewrote what a bank is and how it behaves,” said Whitehurst. “They moved perceptions away from these large corporate institutions to something young, exciting and vibrant. And they’re connected much more closely with people’s lives this way. Banks feel much more like lifestyle brands today than they probably ever did.”

Then there’s the fact that through the packaging, challenger banks have been able to express their brand identities and personalities, differentiating themselves not only from incumbent banks but also from other challenger banks.

“It can embed the spirit of brands in a different way through cheeky little tones and things like that,” said Whitehurst.

The real takeaway though is that activating a new card holds the risk of being a pretty dull, forgettable event. And since card activation is often the first physical contact the user has with a chosen challenger bank, it’s important that it becomes memorable.

“If you reward customers, and they feel very good when they receive this thing that welcomes them into the club, there will be emotional investment immediately,” said Whitehurst. “But if you bury the card in an instruction manual, or in a written piece of text, it gets lost, it looks boring, and people often don’t pay much attention to it.”

Not to mention that in the age of social media, once an event becomes worth remembering, it becomes worth sharing. And that can help the challenger bank catch more people’s attention.

“Packaging is even more powerful as a shareable asset through social media. It seems to have become this personal billboard for influencers,” said Whitehurst. “If you Google ‘unboxing videos’ right now, you’ll get over 100 million hits, which is crazy. But it shows that people care about this stuff. They care about how the products are packaged, and how they received their needs, and the experience of receiving them.”

Ultimately, packaging seems to have helped challenger banks present their products not only as something you have to have, but as something you want to have.

As contactless pay continues to rise though, the question is whether the experience we get from opening a cool package can be translated to a digital setting.

“Digital absolutely is where everything’s going. It’s convenient and some of the experience is very useful. But I think you lose some of the feeling that you get with real physical stuff,” said Whitehurst. “I think there’s huge value in brands crafting products and packaging. You can build a really strong brand experience around that, which you can never quite simulate digitally.”

Behind Marqeta’s launch into credit card issuance with Kevin Doerr

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 12:45:41 GMT

A lot is going on the issuing side. New players are entering, competition is crossing borders, and existing players are expanding into new products. Marqeta is making perhaps the biggest expansion of its platform since its launch.

I’m joined by Chief Product Officer Kevin Doerr to talk about the firm’s new credit card issuing platform. We talk about what that means for the firm, its customers, and its competition. Doerr joined the firm last year and it’s been a wild one — he shares his experiences that show a company in growth mode coping with the changes of organic expansion, as well as challenges of dealing with the pandemic.

Tearsheet Podcast · Behind Marqeta's launch into credit card issuance with Kevin Doerr

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The following excerpts were edited for clarity.

Entering credit

We’re announcing today that Marqeta is moving into the credit space, similar to how we’ve executed and grown from our origins as an issuer processor on the prepaid and debit side of the business with our customers. We have seen a ton of demand from our existing customers, and also potential customers, for us to take some of the attributes, characteristics and actions that we’ve taken with modern API’s and good program management into the credit space.

We’ve been working on product and a set of features and with some partnerships in the industry, we are able to accelerate our launch into the credit space and move into this adjacent market. It’s a very natural adjacency, for us and for our customers. We’re excited to take this out to our customer base.

The business case

From a business point of view, the business case that’s supported, our investments, demand from existing customers, opportunity with newer and even larger customers, gives us a clear perspective. It takes a long time to get these programs together and get to market. You may not have all the granular controls you want over configuration settings. You may not have the acceleration of changes you want to make to programs in the marketplace.

I think when customers look at the opportunity that we created in prepaid and debit, and that flexible, granular control, and the ability to execute on a plan or a new insight from their own data very, very quickly, they wanted to see us offer that in the credit space. And so the business case for us became very clear to align with that, to build with a similar level of scale, availability and quality that we have in our other areas. And then take that to market.

Credit brings different challenges

I think one of the challenges from a business model point of view is it’s a completely different business. And so we’re choosing to enter the marketplace with other partners. We are doing what we do best with respect to credit. But we’re going to work with some other partners to help on the program management and ledger initially. So we’re excited about that because it gets us into market faster for our customers to be able to deploy.

And on the technical side, the good news is there is a lot of what we have built in the way we’ve built it to support the debit and prepaid programs around the globe. There’s a way of thinking — very similar DNA — to how we construct the platform and infrastructure pieces, and then the application stack. What is different here is some of the complexity around the rewards programs that we’re putting in place. Obviously, there is complexity around managing APR, around managing calculations on fees and interest and things like that. There are a number of technical challenges that are different from some of the other operations that we run. And we’ve just looked at those very, very carefully, learned as much as we can and then iterated over time to get to where we are ready for launch today.

Joining Marqeta

It’s been fantastic. It starts with onboarding almost completely remotely. I had a great chance to meet the executive team, board, investors and a few of my leadership team. But the vast majority of my large team, I’ve not met in person — it’s only been over Zoom or Meet or other products. That’s been interesting: how to land yourself into an organization, build the trust, build the credibility, build the relationships that are necessary to be able to then put plans in place and be able to execute.

I think the other part that we’re probably both not dancing around at all has been the pandemic and the extraordinary impact that it’s had on companies like Marqeta. Obviously, the pandemic itself, and its sort of grim reality, has been extremely challenging for the entire United States and for the world at large. But the impact on payments, infrastructure, digital payments, and the behavioral changes we’ve seen have been extraordinary.

Growth

We’ve seen massive, massive growth and uptake of products and services that our customers offer — whether it’s on demand delivery or p2p payments, as well as contactless payments, which has become a critical and accepted adopted part of our usual routine, in terms of transactions. All those things have served to to grow our business dramatically over the past year.

We definitely had a couple of categories — travel and expense management were areas corporations pulled back from. Some of our customers certainly saw some unfavorable trends. Those have started to change already for some of those customers. And, you know, travel never really went away. But it has taken a pretty big hit to those customers. We stuck with them. And we’ve tried to provide the support that we can through the last year or so.

Launching with partners

Our first partner that we’re launching this with is Deserve. We’re not exclusive — neither company’s exclusive in this arrangement — but we’re super excited about their technical capabilities, their perspective on the marketplace, the way they think about customers, customer support and service. We’re very aligned, there’s really good DNA match between the two companies. And so in our MVP, we really understood that they were the right partner to be able to take some of the infrastructure and operational approach, specifically around underwriting and program management, that would allow both of us to serve customers much more quickly in the space.

We do expect that there could be other partners in the future that we work with, both on the program management side, but potentially on the bank side. And look, it’s most important for us to be able to provide customers what they need as quickly and as robustly as possible. We think about other parts of that stack and other parts of the operational side as sort of a later question for us.

New use cases

We’re gonna see a lot more interesting use cases come out of the capabilities that we’re providing to customers. I go back to our core, which is that we’re a developer company. We’re built for developers. And so when you enable a set of given transactions, we want some level of robustness and completeness. What we’re doing is we’re giving a set of functionality to another set of developers at other companies to think about their use cases. And to think about them extremely creatively over their value proposition, the differentiation that they can build on top of these API’s.

That enablement is really the thing that we’ve been successful with in terms of prepaid and debit. And now we’re bringing that same kind of playbook to the credit marketplace. On top of that, you are starting to see some interesting use cases from customers that are in the market with other products today: a company like Fold, which is using a debit card today with the notion of a rewards program that’s actually tied to satoshis. You can spin the wheel at a transaction, and it’s a bit of a gamification of it. But the card is proving to be wildly popular. And it’s a great way to deliver a rewards program to a slightly different audience.

I love the thinking behind that. And I think there’s many, many other companies and customers and potential customers that can deliver really innovative use cases. We’re here to support them, whether they are in the financial form, the rewards form, or in other areas around performance. What kind of functionality can you build into the application to make it easier for customers to want to do business with you and be top of wallet?

Go to market

We’re going to work closely with Deserve. We’re going into beta right now, actually. And our intent is to work with a couple of customers, to get into motion with it, understand what we need to understand and make sure that we have all the operationalization to our products, API’s and support that we need to and then start to open up to other programs later this year.

We anticipate having several programs on board by the end of the year for sure. But we want to get started with a few beta customers and make sure that everything that we’ve been building, as we start to operationalize, is going to meet their needs. It’s often the case that when we get into market, we find that there are a couple of more transactions that customers will want or need to flesh out their use case for experience. And we want to be able to use those as fast follows on our roadmap to provide solutions for customers.

Bringing in new skills

One of the things I found is that you always want great developers and great product managers. Period. But it does pay to have specific expertise in banking infrastructure, whether that’s prepaid debit, credit, or any of the above. You need to have an understanding of the fundamentals. What does the fundamental banking infrastructure look like? What are the protocols that are used? What’s the understanding of the messages that are typically moved back and forth? How do you manage the data files? How do you continue to take the combination of all four of those things and create systems and architecture that produces the least amount of latency, highest amount of performance, and also the the highest degree of surety or certainty that the money you’re moving around is as accurate as possible?

Having people from the community — and I like to think about the modern fintech community — has been very helpful. And we continue to recruit those talented folks on board, whether it’s in design, engineering or product.

"You want the right people to come in and say, ‘I think I can do this job’”: What ...

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 12:45:13 GMT

You can’t think outside the box if you’re only hiring boxes. Banks and other financial firms are realizing that hiring neurodiverse candidates isn’t just something they can do to get PR points, but a genuine way to outperform competitors.

Companies that have been actively incorporating neurodiversity into their culture are doing much better than their competitors, according to a case study by Disability:IN, a nonprofit that supports disability inclusion in business.

“On average, they have 28% higher revenue, two times the net income, and 30% higher economic profit margins,” said Jill Houghton, president and CEO of Disability:IN. “So it really pays to be disability inclusive.”

Financial companies are also reaping the benefits of neurodiverse hiring. A more neurodiverse work environment could be the key to finding and pursuing effective ideas and strategies, creating open communication throughout the company, and improving overall efficiency.

JPMorgan Chase and Ernst & Young are among the companies with the largest US autism hiring programs. Together with SAP and Microsoft, these companies’ neurodiversity programs have a 90% higher than average retention rate.

Since 2016, EY has implemented six Neurodiversity Centers of Excellence — the company’s neurodiversity hiring initiatives — and is planning to build three more. Chase, which launched its own Autism at Work program in 2015, reported a 99% retention rate. Employees in the program were also described as more efficient, with a 90 to 140% greater level of productivity.

Another bank that has taken an interest in improving neurodiversity among employees is Deutsche Bank. The bank started its neurodiversity initiative in the UK in 2016, joining forces with Autistica, a UK-based research charity, to better adapt the hiring process.

Kate Copeman, Global Lead for Deutsche Bank’s Autism Internship, was inspired after seeing a statistic that said 85% of autistic adults in the UK at the time were unemployed.

The program began with a 12-week pilot in the UK. This proved to be a success. Out of eight people in the internship, five stayed on after, and three secured jobs in other organizations.

‘Our research shows that consumers find investing to be intimidating’: Marcus by Goldman ...

Fri, 19 Feb 2021 12:45:11 GMT

Goldman Sachs’ consumer banking unit Marcus launched its digital investment offering this week. Marcus Invest offers consumers automated management of their stock and bond ETF portfolios based on users’ risk tolerance and investment timelines. It also offers individual and joint investment accounts as well as three types of individual retirement accounts.

The robo-adviser connects consumers with the investing resources of Goldman Sachs through portfolio models designed by the company’s Investment Strategy Group at a minimum account balance of $1000. It charges an annual advisory fee of 0.35 percent for trade commissions, transfer fees, daily monitoring, rebalancing and management.

“We are excited to deliver our investment acumen and advice to a wider audience. Our research shows that many consumers find investing to be intimidating or don’t have the time to spend on it,” said Andrea Finan, head of digital investing at Goldman Sachs.

“Marcus Invest helps reduce these pain points by recommending a diversified investment portfolio for you based on the information you provide with vetted ETFs, and then taking care of daily monitoring and periodic rebalancing.”

Marcus was launched in 2016 to expand and diversify Goldman Sachs’ revenue sources. It offers consumers fixed rate personal loans, savings accounts and Marcus Insights, a financial management tool. In September of last year the Marcus app had over 5 million users.

The Marcus Invest launch is emblematic of Goldman Sachs repositioning its services to accommodate consumers across a variety of financial backgrounds. The investment bank has traditionally served high income clientele during its 150 year tenure.

Marcus Invest’s low minimum account balance gives the platform a customer acquisition advantage over its competitors like Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, which requires an account balance of $5000, and Vanguard’s Personal Advisor Services, which requires a threshold of $50,000.

According to research, there is a major trust gap between consumers who prefer traditional wealth managers to digital alternatives. 64 percent of consumers say that they trust traditional wealth management resources compared with 49 percent who lean towards digital wealth managers.

“Fintech startups can innovate a lot faster than traditional banks. While still regulated, they have a lot less legal red tape to get through to innovate and change what a traditional investment experience would look like,” said Ryan Jue, co-founder of investment management app Ursa.

“On the flip side, because they don’t have the same stress tests and limitations, edge cases can be messy such as margin capital issues in the recent GameStop and Robinhood event. In robo-advisers like Wealthfront and Betterment, users sacrifice tailored advice for portfolio model templates, but more accessible at lower costs.”

As a fintech powered by Goldman Sachs, Marcus’s digital investment offering is uniquely positioned to cater to consumers across the spectrum of the fintech trust gap.

Recent interest in stocks following the GameStop trading saga, championed by enthusiastic retail traders on the WallStreetBets subreddit, led to soaring Google searches on “how to buy stocks” in the last week of January. 2020 saw a boom in individual investors using online trading apps like Robinhood. Despite all the excitement, Marcus Invest does not offer consumers the opportunity to buy individual stocks.

“The last few weeks have been unprecedented in terms of market volatility and trading volumes. Through Marcus Invest, we are looking to provide advisory services to retail customers who are looking to invest for the long term,” said Finan.

“We take a strategic long-term approach to investing when we design our portfolios. That longer-term approach allows our portfolios to balance both risk and returns over time, and not overreact to short-term market turbulence.”

Deep Dive: Coinbase

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 12:45:58 GMT

Profile Coinbase is a leading cryptocurrency exchange that offers customers a platform to buy, sell and manage their cryptocurrency assets. It provides crypto based products such as the Coinbase Wallet, the Asset Hub and Coinbase Pro. The company provides varying levels of support for 50 cryptocurrencies in terms of buying, selling, depositing and withdrawing, while cryptocurrencies unavailable for trading exist on the platform for educational purposes. In December 2020, Coinbase confidentially filed with the SEC to go public. It intends to go public through a direct listing and has chosen Nasdaq as its listing venue. The startup was launched in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. Coinbase is currently available in more than a 100 countries and has had more than $455 billion in total volume traded in addition to around $90 billion of assets on its platform. The company has headquarters in San Francisco, California and has offices in Dublin, Tokyo, Portland, London, New York and has more than 1200 employees. Products

This content is available exclusively to Tearsheet Outlier members.

‘Black History Month is good business and good for business’: How financial firms are ...

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 12:45:42 GMT

On the back of the racial tensions that bubbled up in 2020, this year is already different. Financial firms are sponsoring and hosting events during Black History Month with a message of support.

TD Bank is sponsoring The Detroit Institute of Arts’ month-long series of online programs celebrating Black History Month, including music, film, and visual art.

Meanwhile, Capital One is launching a visual and auditory installation planned and executed by the bank’s Black associates in its Capital One Cafes in New York, Chicago, DC and New Orleans. The installation, called Forward, showcases Black Americans’ persistence, progress, and resilience. Then there are also select ATM vestibules which will feature soundbites voices from Black artists, poets, and historical figures.

The racial injustices of last year seemed to have fuelled an increased investment in Black History Month this year.

“Black History Month is seeing more recognition in 2021 because of the racial and social justice movement of 2020. Corporations are being held to a higher standard when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion,” said Toni Harrison, managing partner and president of Etched/Ten35, a communication firm specializing in multicultural audiences. “BHM celebrations are critical for any organization seeking to engage Black audiences. We saw this on a smaller scale with Juneteenth, when big brands that had never acknowledged the holiday rush to develop programs and observances for the day.”

With increased awareness of racial injustices in the U.S., companies might see this month as a chance to prove that their beliefs are aligned with those of their customers, investors and employees.

“Black History Month is good business and good for business,” said Dale Dowdie, president and CEO of Intellitech Consulting Enterprises and Co-Founder and CEO of BlackFacts.com, a website sharing videos and articles about Black history and current events affecting the Black community.

“With the work forces in all industries becoming more and more culturally diverse, many forward-thinking leaders are realizing that to many of their employees, customers and other stakeholders, ‘representation matters’,” said Dowdie. “Company acknowledgment of events that are meaningful to them communicates the message that ‘we see you’.”

Since February 1st, JP Morgan Chase and Visa teamed up with United to offer five miles to every dollar United Club Visa Cardmembers spend as donations to specific organizations supporting civil rights and propelling higher education for Black youth. The offer is set to last until March 15.

Meanwhile, Wells Fargo, which went under fire last year for CEO Charles Scharf’s comment about ‘a very limited Black talent pool’, is investing in six Black-owned banks in honor of Black History Month, as part of its $50 million pledge to help communities that have been severely impacted by the pandemic.

Since the pandemic took hold in the U.S., banks have also seen an accelerated loss of trust among Black and Latinx customers. Black History Month could provide an opportunity to show support and appeal more to Black customers.

“Banks are in a precarious position. Consumer trust in banks has been on the decline for years. During COVID, Black and Latinx communities paid twice as much in bank fees,” said Etched/Ten35’s Harrison. “This means banks have a long way to go when it comes to connecting with Black audiences who have been lost in the financial system.”

Then there’s also the case that banks and financial companies’ increased attention towards Black History Month could count as strategy to appeal more to younger generations

“There’s a general rising consciousness among business leaders (connected to this new social awareness) that building connections with the Black community is good for profit and purpose,” said Paul David, co-founder & CEO of Literal Humans, a Black-owned content marketing agency. “Gen Z and Millennials ‘stand’ for brands that take a strong stance, it’s that simple.”

Many financial companies have been using their social media channels as ways to emphasize their observance of Black History Month — for example, through Instagram.

Varo kicked off February 1st sharing a post honoring Black leaders. On that same day, Ellevest shared a quote on the platform honoring Black women. February 2nd, Chime shared quotes from ten Black female business owners.

Since ages 25 to 34 and ages 18 to 24 are the largest advertising audiences on Instagram, according to Hootsuite’s digital report in October 2020, financial companies could be using the platform specifically to market to younger generations.

But ultimately, to get more engagement from customers, financial companies will still need to think past advertisements, said Ida Byrd-Hill, CEO & Founder of Automation Workz, a management consulting firm.

“Many companies are realizing they have overlooked African Americans in generating their revenue. The Black Lives Matter Movement opened their eyes to the potential market,” said Byrd-Hill. “What many companies do not realize is that advertisements alone will not get them access to diversity markets. Higher ranking managers and executives who serve as ambassadors are needed to carve the path to revenue.”

Case Study: Inside Bank of Georgia’s digital transformation

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 12:45:00 GMT

In 2015, Bank of Georgia launched a mobile bank. Ever since, it’s been ramping up its digital transformation program. By all accounts, the bank is on to something, converting customers over to digital channels.

The following was produced by Tearsheet Studio. We worked with fintech software provider Strands to create a visual and audio case study about Bank of Georgia’s digital transformation.

Tearsheet Podcast · Case Study: Inside Bank of Georgia’s digital transformation

Beginning two years ago, the Bank of Georgia began its journey toward agile development. It created cross-functional teams to develop banking products and to design the digital channels.

The company also turned to Strands, a software provider of cash flow management tools to banks, to help power its banking app. Strands’ Personal Financial Management Solution uses artificial intelligence to show people how they spend, and then help them do it better.

The two companies created a single team to work on the integration. The timeline was compressed — the companies went from signing a contract to launching a product in six months. They kept to their steering meetings religiously.

Customers are responding to Bank of Georgia’s PFM rollout. It’s had a big positive impact — firstly, on the customer satisfaction side. But secondly,
on the engagement side, too, because the bank is getting almost 39% daily engagement for its mobile bank, according to Levan Kobakhidze, Bank of Georgia’s chief digital officer.

Customers enjoy looking at the data insights, visualizations of different statistics on their transactional history. This allows them to make a lot of decisions based on how they want to manage their finances.

Download the case study to learn

How Bank of Georgia approached its digital transformation within the digital team and across the organization
The steps Bank of Georgia took to convert customers’ physical interactions into digital experiences
How Bank of Georgia used PFM to increase app store ratings to 4.7 of its mobile app
Bank of Georgia’s plans for transitioning business customers to digital

Download the Case Study: Inside Bank of Georgia’s digital transformation

Behind Shopify’s move to embed payments on Facebook and Instagram

Tue, 16 Feb 2021 12:45:56 GMT

Last week, Shopify announced a partnership with Facebook to expand its online checkout platform Shop Pay to all Shopify merchants selling across Facebook and Instagram. The expansion will enable Shop Pay as a payment option on Facebook Pay for consumers on Facebook and Instagram.

Currently the feature is available in the U.S on Facebook Pay for Shopify merchants using checkout on Instagram. In the coming weeks, it will be accessible to Shopify sellers in the U.S using checkout on Facebook.

“Facebook continues to be one of our most popular sales and marketing channels for our merchants,” said Carl Rivera, general manager at Shopify and head of product at Shop Pay.

“For example, at the start of the pandemic from March through April, marketing on Facebook and Instagram via Shopify’s channel integration saw 36 percent growth in monthly active users — a trend that continues to rise — paving the way for the very natural expansion of Shop Pay onto these platforms.”

According to Rivera, Shopify sees social shopping as a growing area of commerce driven largely by a younger demographic who are more likely to use social media to discover new brands and shop.

Shopify’s Future of Commerce report states that 28 percent of younger online shoppers said they purchased via social media, compared to 20 percent of middle aged online shoppers and 8 percent of older consumers. It also demonstrates that 54 percent of younger consumers who purchase from independent retailers discover brands through social media compared to 43 percent of middle aged consumers aged between 35 and 54 and 25 percent of consumers older than 55.

“Social commerce is a very effective tool for e-commerce that has only just begun gaining momentum and widespread usage,” said Alexander M. Kehoe, the co-founder of digital marketing and strategy agency Caveni Digital Solutions. “Listing your products on every channel available is fairly standard for most e-commerce sellers. The inclusion of even more easily accessible channels to place products on means that e-commerce providers are positioned to benefit significantly.”

In addition to its social media expansion, Shop Pay allows users to track orders and see the carbon emissions offset from the deliveries of their purchases. According to Shopify, Shop Pay has offset 75,000 tons of carbon emissions, which is the equivalent of 85 million trees protected in the Peruvian rainforest.

“With 53 percent of consumers saying they prefer green or sustainable products, we’re now making it possible for more consumers who check out on Facebook and Instagram to shop sustainably,” said Rivera.

In 2020. Shop Pay processed more than 137 million orders and by the end of the year and has facilitated nearly $20 billion in cumulative GMV since its launch in 2017. A Shopify study found that checkout on Shop Pay is 70 percent faster than a typical checkout, with a 1.72x higher conversion rate.

According to Joe Sinkwitz, CEO of influencer marketing network Intellifluence, Shop Pay’s social media expansion will open up significant business opportunities for social media influencers. Through increased monetary incentives, influencers will be in the position to market Shopify enabled products which will ultimately encourage more purchases.

“From an influencer perspective, we’re seeing a lot of excitement surrounding the Shopify integrations into Instagram and Facebook, as that will give creators a sizable increase in monetization capacity, and will be great for those brands hosted on Shopify to have the additional sales channel,” said Sinkwitz. “We expect the integration will in time be a primary driver of influencer marketing requests, in terms of activating Instagram as a more direct sales channel.”

‘Personal agency and digital transformation are here to stay’: 4 top marketers sound off on ...

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 12:45:47 GMT

Tearsheet’s Acquire Conference is one day away. To kick things off, we’re sharing four industry experts’ thoughts on marketing, sales and user experience campaigns — from marketing trends we can expect to see in 2021, to how their companies pivoted marketing, and digital strategies under pressures of the pandemic.

Tearsheet’s Rimal Farrukh and Rivka Abramson contributed to this article.

Halle Hutchison is the chief brand officer at Varo Money

Halle Hutchinson has been the chief brand officer at Varo Money since November 2019. She has over 20 years experience in the industry.

In addition to her role as chief brand officer, Hutchinson has also been a board advisor at Spoonful, a health and wellness platform, since October 2018, as well as principal at HH Consulting, a marketing and advertising consultancy, since 2016.

Her previous experience includes her role as director of advertising and brand at T-Mobile from 2005 to 2008, where she was responsible for Time Magazine Reader’s #1 advertising campaign: “Who’s in Your Fave Five?” for T-Mobile’s NBA sponsorship featuring Charles Barkley and Dwayne Wade.

For Varo, using its platforms as a way to share customer stories has helped the challenger bank create a sense of empathy, which has been extra important under the effects of the pandemic.

“For Varo, opening up our social platforms to let customers have a voice has been incredibly impactful,” said Hutchinson. “Rather than use our platforms to always talk about ourselves, Varo lets our customers take the mic per se.”

Still, Varo had to rethink its strategies as the effects of Covid started stacking up. Hutchinson said to stay afloat, it was crucial that the company doubled down on understanding their users’ needs — new and old — and figuring out how Varo fits into their customers’ lives.

“It has always been true in good marketing, and even more so now during the pandemic and the political and social strife of 2020, to ensure you are listening to your customers and continually monitoring trends in the broader culture,” said Hutchinson. “You should know your brand’s role within the current environment.”

In 2020, lots of people used the pandemic’s pause button effect as a motivator to work on their goals, including working on startup ideas and planning out their own businesses. Meanwhile, people who already had businesses were doubling down on digital transformation to stay afloat.

These two trends — personal agency and digital transformation — are here to stay, said Hutchinson. The goal now is to find ways to incorporate these trends into future marketing campaigns.

“The already emerging trends around personal agency and digital transformation will continue to accelerate,” said Hutchinson. “Brands that are poised and prepared to leverage those will emerge as more relevant and stay in pace with culture.”

Jeanniey Walden is the chief innovation marketing officer at DailyPay

Jeanniey Walden has been the chief innovation officer at DailyPay since 2019.

Before that, she was at Mercer for three years, making her way to global chief marketing officer in April 2017.

She is the first woman to be among the C-suite at DailyPay and was included in “Top 25 Women Leaders in Financial Technology” by the Financial Technology Report.

DailyPay’s DEI marketing methods are rooted in the resources it provides its own employees, said Walden. “More than ever, in today’s social climate, employers need to take charge to create an inclusive, diverse culture that communicates their corporate values to their staff,” said Walden.

In the past five years, the company has established three employee resource groups, including DailyWomen, DailyNoire, and DailyGay. This year, it hosted events surrounding its DEI initiatives.

“We also worked with our clients to host an informative webinar on forming employee resource groups, and weave DEI into our marketing tactics — from website design to articles on DEI.”

Then there are the challenges specific to Covid-19.

Before the pandemic started, DailyPay had planned for months to launch Pay Experience, a rebranding campaign. But when the company saw the impact Covid-19 was having on the economy, the company knew it had to pivot. Instead, it ended up launching Pay Different, a campaign founded on the idea that an instant pay platform is a safer way to pay employees as they return to the workforce.

“During this time period, we had to strategically focus on building our B2B marketing while attending to the needs of our users,” said Walden. “Though the challenges we encountered while pivoting our company’s brand direction were at times difficult and uncomfortable, they opened up avenues of creativity.”

In terms of what we can expect to see in 2021, Walden thinks virtual is here to stay.

“Marketers will need to understand that conferences, sales meetings, editor events and more will never go back to the way we once knew it. This last year taught us how digitization ultimately created more opportunity and accessibility for all, which is great for marketers trying to cast a wide net of prospects.”

Laura Goldberg is the chief revenue and marketing officer at Kabbage

With around 22 years of experience in building strategy and operations for major companies, Goldberg currently oversees marketing, sales and business development at small business lending platform Kabbage.

Goldberg started out her career in financial services at global wealth manager and investment bank Credit Suisse. Before joining Kabbage, Goldberg worked as the chief marketing officer at Legal Zoom and led its marketing team to drive accessibility for legal services to small businesses and families.

As a small business lender, Kabbage had to quickly implement supportive measures for its small business customers at the onset of the pandemic. The company developed cash flow products to support small businesses throughout 2020, including their e-gift certificate launch in March and the formation of new business checking accounts in July. The most significant opportunity for extending its services arrived in the form of the Paycheck Protection Program. In July of 2020, Kabbage reported to have processed over 209,000 PPP loan applications for small businesses amounting to $5.8 billion.

“The pandemic certainly forced us to adapt to a market which was turned upside down for small businesses who were significantly impacted by nationwide closures,” said Goldberg. “Marketing and sales then looked far different than pre-pandemic times, but the Paycheck Protection Program presented an enormous opportunity for us to apply our technology to help deliver relief funds during the largest national-relief program in the history of the administration. I give so much credit to our team during that time. Even without paid acquisition, we became the 2nd largest PPP lender in the nation.”

Goldberg also shared her thoughts on how the pandemic has created a much greater need for increasing opportunities for women in financial services.

“The pandemic was detrimental to women’s jobs in the workforce as daycares and schools closed forcing many professional women to turn their attention to the home, with some reports stating nearly 2 million jobs were permanently erased. We need you now more than ever,” said Goldberg.

Sara Tresch is the senior vice president of digital transformation and user experience at Charles Schwab

Sara Tresch is responsible for driving product development strategies and user experience innovation and research. She currently heads Charles Schwab’s Digital Accelerator and Innovation Labs aimed at the company’s digital transformation efforts.

Tresch also serves as a member of the leadership team of Schwab’s Digital Services organization, which is responsible for developing overall digital strategy and improving client relationships. She is also an executive sponsor for the firm’s PRIDE employee group and serves as a board advisor for marketing technology startup, Simon Data.

Before her experience at Charles Schwab, Tresch worked at American Express in several leadership roles in customer experience, strategy, operations and business development. At the beginning of her career she worked in investment banking, focusing specifically on mergers and acquisitions in the technology and healthcare sectors.

According to Tresch, the pandemic brought with it several challenges around user experience collaborations.

“Moving virtually was a particular challenge for user experience,” said Tresch. “Prior to the pandemic, we were big advocates of co-location for our client experience teams so they could collaborate easily across several functions. With the pandemic we had to use new tools and techniques to keep this collaborative style alive, and also find ways to energize and refuel our teams along the way. While an initial challenge, it has created a lot of new ways of working that we will carry forward regardless of where we are sitting in a year.”

For individuals just starting out in digital strategy, Tresch highlighted the importance of honing a diverse range of skills. “So many of the jobs we do today in financial services require a large cross section of skills – marketing, technology, customer insights, analytics to name a few,” said Tresch.

“This opens up opportunities for people with different backgrounds and skills that are needed to work in an industry undergoing so much exciting change.”

‘Tech is global but local payments determine who’s a winner or loser’: PPRO’s Simon Black

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 12:45:00 GMT

Simon Black, PPRO’s CEO, is my guest today on the show. The company is off a big $180 million fundraising. This caps off a 2020, where the local payments company doubled its Q4 transaction volumes year over year. PPRO has also grown its team 60% in the past 12 months, as it expands globally.

Simon talks about what why payment companies are so focused on local payments and how his firm differentiates itself in an increasingly competitive market.

Tearsheet Podcast · ‘Tech is global but local payments determine who’s a winner or loser’: PPRO’s Simon Black

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The following excerpts were edited for clarity.

Local payments

A lot of e-commerce was driven out of the US and Western Europe, particularly the UK, on one hand, but then also, in China and parts of Southeast Asia. For the business driven out of the West, in the US, the dominant payment methods have been Visa and MasterCard, and to some extent, PayPal and Amex. It’s a fairly homogenous way to pay for things.

As e-commerce has grown around the world, what’s interesting is, while technology is a global trend, local factors, including local regulatory environment and local cultural preferences, have determined who the winners and losers are in the way people pay. Even in a developed market, like Germany today, the majority of adults still don’t have a credit card. Why is that? Because there’s a cultural aversion to credit. So how do people tend to pay online? Actually, one of the most common ways to pay is direct from your bank account, what in the US you would refer to as ACH.

In China, a whole generation — the first generation of middle class — skipped plastic altogether. The dominant way to pay online in China is through mobile wallets like Alipay and WeChat Pay.

So you have these different trends in different markets, which have created great complexity. The local way to pay is super important, because ultimately, it can mean more or less revenue for a seller. Consumers avoid friction. We like to do things which are easy and convenient. So if you can’t pay with your preferred payment method, you would go shop somewhere else.

Merchant needs

Merchants big and small are internationalizing, and particularly for e-commerce, because the barriers to entry are very low. If you’re a small business selling online in the US, you have a hell of a market to go for before you want to go overseas. If you’re a small merchant selling online in Belgium, you’ve got a pretty limited market. Right? There’s a growing trend of internationalization, where even small and medium sized US companies see bigger opportunities for selling overseas. We help them navigate those those local market differences.

We focus on enabling the payments industry. We partner with a lot of companies that your listeners will be familiar with, like Worldpay, now part of FIS, or MasterCard, which has a payment gateway division, through to tech players, like Mollie and Stripe. We partner with a whole host of payments companies around the world: Ant Group or Alipay is one of our partners. And we enable them to serve their merchants or any organization that needs to collect payment.

An example would be within Belgium. If you want to sell to a Belgian, debit cards are provided by the national debit card scheme (in a number of European countries, the national debit card scheme still survives). So we’re not talking about some exotic payment method here or an outlet, we’re just talking about your debit card. So you’re living in Brussels, you want to pay online with your debit card. Now this becomes a challenge for an international payments business — it’s another local payment method they need to deal with. And yet their customer, the retailer, really wants to offer it, because if you’re selling into Belgium, you need to offer it. If you’re selling into the Netherlands, you need to offer iDEAL, which is a pay by bank payment method paying direct from your bank account.

Consumers driving trends

The push comes up from the consumer to the retailer and from the retailer up to the payments company. For the payments company, this is a challenge because there are many hundreds of important payment methods around the world. If they integrate all of them, it’s huge overhead. PPRO offers a layer that simplifies that and aggregates it and in doing so, increases their speed to market.

Trends in the business

We had a very good year and particularly in the fourth quarter, we more than doubled our payment volume, year on year. We’re in a really fortunate position — despite the tragic, wider consequences of the pandemic — we’ve seen an acceleration of the trends which are already there for people to buy more goods and services online. And we think a lot of those new behaviors will stick after the pandemic. In the past 12 months, there was a rush by merchants to get online. We’ve also seen the number of merchants active on our platform double and as we’ve already mentioned, a lot of payment schemes themselves are gaining traction. PayPal recently announced their results for the year, and they just demolished one record after another. So yeah, we’re in a good position.

I think the big difference from my perspective is the criticality now of enabling local payments. If you’re a retailer that wants to cross borders, or you’re a payments company with customers like that, or a payments company that wants to get into new markets, then you have to offer choices of local payment methods. We’re seeing evidence of that.

Competition

PPRO’s an unusual company in that we’re really forging new ground. We’re building something that hasn’t been done before, and no one is doing so with the same focus. We’re building a platform that enables plug and play for local payments. There’s a lot of complexity to address. It’s not just a technical solution; we also move the funds. That means we have to collect funds, and we have to settle to our customers and their customers. In some cases, we have to reconcile.

We’re also navigating different compliance rules. Regulatory requirements can vary by country to country, and there can be FX and tax complexity. What makes us unique is we are building specifically for the payments industry. So we go to market through our partners, which are payments companies, big and small. That partnership model, building a platform that enables local payments for the payments industry, differentiates us, as opposed to going directly to merchants.

New investment

I’m really pleased to get through this fundraising milestone. The growth in volume and raising investment is all a reflection of what our team has been able to achieve at PPRO. We’re now around 330 people. And we expect to add another 100 people this year. And we’ve got experts, payment professionals, as we call them, around the world. It’s a great credit to them.

We brought in several new investors in this round, which saw a total investment of $180 million. New investors include Eurazeo, Wellington, and Sprints Capital, a growth equity investor out of Europe and the U.S. What the funding means is we can accelerate our investment. And we’ll use that to build the team, but also look for potential acquisitions. We made our first acquisition in 2019, which has proven very successful by giving us a great base for Latin American expansion. We’ve shown we can can merge and integrate well with other businesses, and we’ll look for more opportunities to do that.

PPRO’s future

At this moment in payments, everyone’s an acquisition target, even the largest payment companies, including ones with $200 billion market caps. Large market caps wouldn’t rule out M&A because there are trillion dollar tech companies out there who are interested in payments. So who knows what the future holds, but our focus is just to keep growing and delivering value for customers.

I get asked a lot about an IPO for PPRO — that’s definitely something we’re starting to look at and consider. We don’t have a firm view on an IPO and when that could be. But that’s definitely something we will develop a view on over the course of this year.

Looking ahead

In 2021, we’ll see an acceleration of new product development. We have a lot of exciting things coming up for customers, in terms of giving them more market coverage, new payment methods, and also enhancements of existing payment methods. When a payment scheme introduces changes of their API, we tend to adopt that very rapidly and make that available to our customers.We are doing some innovative things to support our partners and enabling them to go to market. We have an online product marketing and partner support tool called Pro Discover. So that’s another exciting initiative for this year.

Personal opportunities

[My focus is on] communication. I think having the privilege to lead a fast growing business means you have to constantly reassess. And that means at least once a year, thinking about how I can have impact. While we continue to operate under constrictions relating from COVID, there’s a cumulative impact when you’re working remotely. You know, you get a bit jaded — everyone’s talking about Groundhog Day.

For me going into this year, it definitely is a commitment to think about how I can better support the team. And a lot of that is through communication and engagement, and what priorities to raise with them and what to listen to, as well as what questions to ask.

‘Workflow’s calling is to rejoin the fragmented parts of an FI’: ServiceNow’s Lauren Robbins

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 12:45:18 GMT

This past year was an external shock to financial customers and employees of FIs. As branches shut and employees turned to working from home, workflows were disrupted and redesigned. Enter ServiceNow, a software company that serves digital workflows for enterprises.

My guest on today’s podcast is Lauren Robbins, general manager of the firm’s financial services business. Her firm has hundreds of FIs as clients and she joins me to talk about how institutions’ expectations have changed during the pandemic. Lauren describes how financial institutions are working to ensure higher levels of customer and employee service in this newly distributed form of work.

Tearsheet Podcast · 'Workflow's calling is to rejoin the fragmented parts of an FI': ServiceNow's Lauren Robbins

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The following excerpts were edited for clarity.

ServiceNow’s roots

ServiceNow is a cloud based software platform. And the heart of what we do is digital workflow and really easy integration. Our purpose is to make the world of work work better for people. So we’re solving for the problem of what stops work from flowing in an organization. That could be things that are held up by manual activities like email and spreadsheets, and we connect it all together with workflow and bring in all the systems that are important to help our customers do that as well.

In the financial services industry

Many financial institutions know ServiceNow by where we got started: as a workflow platform. Our founder had this great idea of, hey, I want to create a platform that makes it really easy to route work anywhere throughout an enterprise. And he was told by early investors, look, you got to make that real for us. And so he made it real in an area that he knew about, which was within IT service management.

So that’s where many of our customers come from — we have over 900 customers in financial services using us on the platform. And that’s where many started their journey. But what they realized is the problems they were solving for, in managing IT incidents, problems, service requests, changes — they also exist in areas like employee onboarding and HR, where employees also need to make requests. And they’ve also realized that, wow, those same problems can cause bottlenecks and delayed cycle times within line of business operations.

Think about trying to open up a mortgage or open up a new deposit or checking account. Those processes can take 30 days. Now, we’re seeing fintechs that are offering those experiences in minutes. So we think about how we can improve those processes, drive more automation, so we can deliver better employee and customer experiences.

Expectations through the pandemic

We’re seeing our customers responding to a couple things that are happening because of this macro climate and the events we’ve seen in 2020. They’re responding to the fact that they’ve needed to scale in a way that they haven’t before, because of all the limitations on all the in person channels. So right now, they’re addressing this mad dash to digital adoption, and to really bolstering those digital channels. And so the implication for them is how they ensure that their IT processes are equipped to be able to keep up with that pace of innovation that’s now required.

They’re also realizing that in order to support their customers the way they need to be supported, it doesn’t just stop at that engagement layer. They actually need to really fundamentally look at the underlying operating model, and how their operations come together to be able to support their customers end to end. We’re seeing a reimagination of that — they’re looking to get more flexibility and more scale, they’re looking to get more speed and efficiency. They’re looking to get better control from a risk and a resilience perspective into how those operations work.

We think there’s really no better calling for workflow and really what ServiceNow does to better join up all the different fragmented parts of a financial institution that are stopping them from serving customers the way they need to today.

Focus on employees

For an industry where work from home was much more the exception than the rule, it’s now definitely becoming more and more of a standard. It’s completely highlighted and really accelerated the need for digital transformation that the industry has been addressing, but maybe not as fast as they possibly could. Because if you think about the worst case scenario for manual processes and things that are paper based, it really is in a distributed work environment.

So we’re seeing now more than ever that the employee experience has become a lot more top of mind for financial institutions. It may have begun as a mode of survival, but now it’s also a way to attract talent into the industry where maybe they couldn’t as powerfully before. We’re seeing a lot of investment on just employing and supporting the wellbeing and the wellness of the employee base.

One customer we work with, as they were trying to address the onset of COVID, was getting calls into their HR call center that were keeping their employees on hold for three hours. They couldn’t get easy answers. And you know, it was just something as simple as putting in a virtual agent that could just address very simple questions of how do I get set up with my remote access? What do I need to know about everything we need to do to operate safely as a business? They were able to deflect over 20% of that call center volume just by having a virtual agent for the employees.

Transformation

We’re seeing a couple of things emerge here, a couple of themes. One is the spillover of agile methodologies, which were adopted as a rapid way to deploy solutions. That’s not going away. But firms are putting them more into how their business prioritizes, how they’re getting faster time to market, and delivering those specific initiatives. We’re seeing continued focus on the customer journey and really understanding what the pain and the friction are, and where we want to be very specific about pinpointing those investments.

The other thing that we’ve been really focused on is getting our customers faster time to market. One of the big problems with customers in financial services is that they’re sitting on a lot of legacy fragmented technology. And it’s only been exacerbated because of M&A, which has proliferated legacy tech. That tends to be a really big bottleneck for what really gets in the way for how our customers can deliver digital solutions. With us, you don’t need to rip and replace or take out that technology. We offer the capability to rationalize what’s needed to deliver the process, what sort of apps you don’t need, and then you can stitch together and connect all those systems that are tied to those customer journeys that are points of friction.

Customer satisfaction

We always refer to the Domino’s Pizza tracker, right? It’s all about giving that customer transparency. And it’s more important now than ever, because customers are in dire need of financial support and help from their banks. What’s happening is that the banks are getting totally inundated by all of these different inquiries and all of this need to support customers.

So, there’s a need for that end to end transparency back to the customer. When they call into the call center and they need to track their requests, they can do that in real time. Things don’t go into a black box, and we saw some of that happen with the onset of the PPP program. I think what hasn’t changed is trust. So much of building trust is the assurance that financial services, the critical services, the assistance that’s needed for customers, small business, and individuals during this time is going to be there and it’s transparently there.

Learning from consumer and tech

I think the GAFA effect is in full force: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon. I think they have set the standard for what a high grade consumer experience can and should be. And I think that’s why we’re seeing a lot of really good partnerships start to emerge with some of those big techs that are offering financial services themselves. The one that immediately comes to mind is the work that Goldman Sachs is doing with Apple to expand the financial services experience embedded into buying Apple products.

2021 priorities

What’s very much top of mind is partnering with our customers on their own unique and respective journeys, for how they see themselves leading through this crisis and being in that position of competitive differentiation. Some FIs may need to start from look, I really need to get the core of our IT operations up and running. And I really need to drive more efficiency and productivity in how we’re delivering innovation back to the business.

Others could say, look, we’re preparing for this new world of remote work and we need to better connect our employees as a distributed workforce back to our company. One of the things that ServiceNow has in our platform is the ability to embed risk, compliance, and control into workflows. In this new world of COVID, we’re seeing very different types of risks emerging that our customers are trying to think about how to manage more efficiently and effectively across their lines of defense.

Lastly, it could be that a firm really needs to invest in how they’re serving their customers, not just with the engagement and lead gen channels, but also how they come together from front to back office to really build trust into the future.

A day in the life of Square’s global head of marketing

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 12:45:14 GMT

The pandemic has been especially harsh for SMBs, many of which have been operating under survival mode to stay afloat. About a third of SMBs were forced to temporarily close down, according to a report released in May last year.

Digital payments player Square, which has been successful among SMBs since its inception, has adapted to the pandemic by upping its business solutions for merchants, such as access to PPP loans, customer refunds on software fees and curbside pick up and delivery services.

“The response from our customers on social media and through emails was overwhelmingly positive and knowing that we were showing up for our customers when they needed us was an amazing experience that made the hard work worth it,” said Lauren Weinberg, the global head of marketing at Square.

Square’s Lauren Weinberg

Weinberg is responsible for overseeing the fintech’s global marketing strategies, analytics, marketing channels and customer acquisition efforts. As a representative of a major brand in a male-dominated industry, Weinberg shares her advice for women just starting out in marketing at financial services brands.

“Trust your instincts and be yourself. It’s not always easy to go against the grain or challenge conventional wisdom, but as you gain more experience, you also build your confidence,” said Weinberg. “Share your point of view and even if others don’t agree, you will learn something and have an interesting conversation. Don’t feel pressured to go along with the group decision if it doesn’t feel right to you.”

Here is a typical day in her life:

Mornings: meditation, breakfast with kids and back to back video calls

My alarm goes off and I usually snooze one time. I like to get up before everyone else in my house. I come downstairs, make a cup of coffee, grab my eye ice mask and get back into bed where I drink my coffee with my eye mask on in complete silence and peace. I consider this my meditation time. After my coffee, I head downstairs and I let my two dogs outside.

After that, I wake my kids up for school and take their breakfast orders. While I am making breakfast, I am usually perusing the New York Times on my phone. Before the pandemic, I left the house before my kids even had breakfast, so I am grateful for this time with them. They recently started going to school again in-person, so I try to drive them to school. During this time, I try to listen to The Daily podcast, but sometimes my kids have other ideas. When I get home, I work out. This usually includes something on the Peloton, but on Thursdays, I take tennis lessons. After my workout, I shower and get ready to start my day. One of the silver linings of the pandemic is having more time to be with my family and take better care of myself.

Most of my team is in San Francisco. I recently relocated to New York. One of the benefits is that I get work time in the morning. I have a system for reviewing deliverables with my team. Essentially, I have a spreadsheet that keeps track of everything that needs to be reviewed with the due date. In the morning, I try to get through as many of these as I can. I also prepare my lunch in the morning. I typically start with video calls around 11 AM and most days my schedule is back to back through the end of the day.

Afternoons: meetings, talking strategy and campaign planning

My afternoons are fairly jam packed with a lot of meetings. These meetings include one on one time with my direct reports and my manager. I also have a lot of meetings with my peers, which include our product leaders, and the sales and customer success leads. As the marketing lead, it’s important to align with stakeholders often since marketing intersects with every part of our business. I also meet a few times a week with my leadership team.

These meetings serve different purposes, but essentially we connect every week to check in on metrics and how we’re pacing against our goals. We also review briefs, creative assets, campaign plans and results once a week. Additionally, we meet weekly to talk about strategic priorities, roadblocks and how we can best work together as a team to move the business forward. At Square, we also do a lot of reviews with our stakeholders. The culture at Square is extremely transparent. During these reviews, various functional leaders share progress of their teams, key priorities and goals.

Outside of Square, I am also on the board of the Modern Marketing Association. We meet to talk about the ever changing landscape for marketers and what work the organization can do to help companies navigate. I’m also a mentor for the Ad Week Executive Mentor program and I usually have one to two mentees that I work with for 6 months.

Finally, I am working on a book with one of my colleagues that is intended to be a guide and resource for small business owners by encapsulating the advice of hundreds of small business owners, so I spend time interviewing business owners and working on the book.

Evenings: Family dinner, carpooling to soccer practice with the kids and night time reading

I usually have my last meeting around 6:30 PM. Luckily, my commute to the kitchen is only 5 seconds. The best part about working remotely is that I now have dinner with my family every night. After dinner, I clean up the kitchen and then help my kids with homework.

In New Jersey, they have been allowing some sports practices, so some days I drive the carpool to soccer, basketball or football practice. We recently moved across the country, so driving a carpool is a good way to meet some of the new kids. Also, when I used to commute to San Francisco every day, I never had time to drive my kids to school or sports practice, so I am taking advantage of this while I can. Most moms probably hate driving a carpool, but I love it. It also gives me a reason to get out of the house.

Once we’re all home, showered and finished with homework, we try to watch a show together — if time permits. If not, my husband and I take turns reading with our boys and putting them to sleep. Once they are asleep, I like to take a bubble bath and read a book. I’m an avid reader. I like to mix it up with fiction and non-fiction, books on marketing, self help, etc. I have a stack of books on my nightstand and go through a few per month.

Before I go to bed, I usually let my dogs out one more time and then bribe them to come upstairs with me with treats so they don’t end up going through the garbage. I usually check email and Slack when I get in bed, as well as my schedule for the next day. I like to know what’s coming and make sure I am prepared. If I’m being completely honest, I usually peruse Instagram for a bit, but I have a time limit so I don’t waste too much time on a screen before bed. From there, I read until I fall asleep — which doesn’t usually take long.

‘It’s difficult for a smaller, local bank to compete against the mega banks’: Inside ...

Thu, 11 Feb 2021 12:45:58 GMT

Sometimes, digital transformation programs work as planned, as evidenced by Trustco Bank’s recent surge in app store ratings. The company went from 2.7 stars to 4.5 stars out of 5 for its iOS app after upgrading its tech.

“Prior to implementation, our iOS application had a stagnant rating of 2.7 stars in the application store,” said J.R. George, Trustco Bank’s administrative vice president. “The enhanced application currently has a rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars and is still trending upward.”

New York-based Trustco Bank, which reported $5.2 billion in assets in 2019 and has 148 branches, has observed higher levels of digital adoption and customer interactions since recently implementing a digital banking platform that includes online account opening, digital payments, lending and customer servicing.

The bank has seen a 10 percent increase in users on its mobile app over 5 months of implementation and its mobile deposit use has increased over 50 percent.

Trustco used a digital banking program called Architect which is offered by digital payments and financial services technology provider Fiserv. It provides banks with digital capabilities that can be incorporated within customer’s own products. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the bank sought to develop its digital capabilities to adapt to growing customer needs for digital banking.

“When COVID-19 hit, people expected progress to be put on hold, but for us it was the opposite,” said Robert J. McCormick, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer at Trustco Bank. “We invested in our digital experience and the reaction from our customers and staff has been overwhelmingly positive.”

Trustco Bank’s staff members have been deeply involved in the digital conversion process by learning tools such as online account opening and mobile deposit to facilitate and educate customers on the bank’s digital changes.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, digital adoption was evolving through increased competition between incumbents and challenger banks. Despite this however it was not widely incorporated as many traditional banks lagged behind on digital services.

Since the pandemic started digital transformation has greatly accelerated within banking and financial services industries. The trend is unlikely to reverse once the pandemic is over as more financial institutions continue to embrace digital.

“As Covid recedes in 2021, branches will open again, but the world will not be the same. There is no going back. People learned to use cashless payments and digital banking, these new habits won’t be unlearned,” said Jake Tyler, CEO of Finn AI, a conversational AI platform for banks.

“We’ve seen years of digital adoption happen in the space of just a few months. How many times a week does Amazon come to your house now to drop something off? How many times have you been to a bank branch in the last 6 months? Banks without quality digital onboarding and self-service experiences will find themselves at a material disadvantage.”

According to a report by Deloitte, the pandemic has inspired FI leadership to recognize the significance of digital transformation as a means to reach customers. In Trustco Bank’s case, digital adoption has also given the “hometown bank” a competitive advantage.

“For several different reasons, it is often difficult for a smaller, local bank to compete against the mega banks like Chase, Citi and Bank of America,” said George. “The Architect platform offers a comprehensive package of digital services that helps us compete against the bigger banks while often out-competing smaller FIs or FIs of the same size.”