Saturday, October 24, 2009

Who would want a bank in their pocket?

I have a lot of respect for what Charles and Brian achieved with Wizzit. The vibey brand and the distribution model should be embraced by other transformational banking ventures. They use the by-line "...you have your bank in your pocket" to describe their mobile banking offer.

Some-one recently said to me: "Who would want a bank in their pocket?" and the more I thought about it, the more I realised that a lot of truth is locked up in this question. Many professionals in this space are grappling with the challenges to ensure take-up and growth of wallets. One of the reasons that transformational banking initiatives work is if it offers a real value proposition.

What we should not be selling is a new kind of bank or banking in a different format. This is not what subscribers really want. As a matter of fact, these customers do not want to get close to a bank if they can help it, but they have very real problems to solve. The brand message should rather be "Now you can send money to some-one else easily" or "It is so easy to pay a bill, or your rent or buy stuff" or "Your money is safe". Thinking about the value proposition, I believe, will help to deploy solutions that people really want.

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