BAI Retail Delivery and The Very Mobile Future of Financial Services
By i2c inc.
Read Time : 05 Min
We just returned from exhibiting at BAI’s Retail Delivery Show in Denver. Held at the Denver Convention Center, the building has a singularly unique architectural feature: an outdoor, two story high blue bear pushing on the side of the building. Viewed from the inside (see photo) it made for an interesting perspe
ctive!
Blue bears aside, with today’s very competitive financial services market, customer acquisition and retention continue to be major challenges for financial institutions, and this was clear from many of the break out sessions. i2c exhibited in the Mobile Marketplace section of the show floor and the future of mobile financial services was also clearly one of the major themes of the show.
Our CEO, Amir Wain, presented to a standing-room-only crowd on our view of this mobile future. With the pressure on fee-based checking products along with the commoditization of many other formerly profitable products, financial institutions today need to continuously search for ways to enrich and increase the value of customer relationships.
Amir’s presentation focused on how the mobile-centric future of financial services will require disruptive thinking and new approaches. Mobile commerce – mCommerce – will require financial institutions to build new, holistic experiences that focus on meeting customer needs, as opposed to a specific mobile strategy or feature set.
In future posts, we plan to talk further on how to build consumer-centric mobile solutions and discuss the extremely low transaction costs and unique customer intimacy mobile can offer.
Beyond the deep interest in mobile and how mobile, loyalty and payments are converging, we also enjoyed talking to the many attendees that stopped by the booth who wanted to understand more about how they could find new ways to reach out to their customers with new prepaid products.
In particular, we observed that regional banks, community banks, and credit unions were interested in learning more about how prepaid can lead to enhancing the financial literacy of their consumers. As a processor with a long, successful track record in prepaid, it was gratifying to see the rapidly growing appreciation of prepaid as a way of meeting the unmet financial needs of bank customers.
We also enjoyed talking with attendees on how to attract and retain customers through loyalty offerings and “sticky” services, such as mobile budgeting tools and targeted discounts, offers & rewards. It’s clear there is a deep need to provide increased value and relevance to bank customers. For banks, it’s all about attracting, engaging, and retaining profitable customers.
Our thanks to the BAI team for a well run and enjoyable show. We enjoyed meeting so many of the members and delegates. The theme of this year’s show was “Ideas to Action”. We will surely continue to blog on payment and emerging commerce solutions that can turn ideas into action for all of our clients and readers – financial institutions, program managers, corporations, governments, and more!
