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The average bank is still on the fence about what if any personal finance management features they should add to their smartphone apps. All agree, however, that what works on websites needs to be modified for mobile apps.
May 23 -
Credit Agricole turns to customers and outside developers to build custom mobile apps.
July 29 -
Personal financial management tools could be more effective, and probably more widely used, if they focused on future spending rather than spending that's already happened.
February 1 -
Personal financial management company Geezeo has launched a site to instruct developers on how to use its API.
September 18
Garanti Bank, Turkey's second-largest private bank, has introduced a mobile dashboard called iGaranti that lets users cherry pick the features of their mobile banking apps. The customization capability is similar to the way people pick which apps appear on their smartphones' home screens.
Garanti partnered with Fjord, an Accenture Interactive-owned service design agency that also counts Citi as a client, to build iGaranti. The platform, rolled out in May, comes with a set of more than 15 apps, some of which are preloaded onto the dashboard, while others are added by the user. "Customers choose what to put on the interface," says Mark Curtis, chief client officer at Fjord. "It's a powerful way to change the relationship people have with money."
Beyond customization, iGaranti lets customers do a number of things most U.S. banks do not, including send payments to Facebook friends, use voice control to initiate money transfers, scan QR codes to withdraw money from ATMs without the need to insert physical cards, and make one-click transfers into savings counts. iGaranti works with third-party apps such as Bonubon, a daily deals site; Markafoni, a private shopping site; and Biletix, Turkey's equivalent of a Ticketmaster.
The dashboard makes available interesting apps related to financial health. Take CashTank, for example. The app displays a customer's spending patterns on a gas tank visual to show when he's running on a full tank and warning him when he's nearing empty and could overspend. Another app, Moneybar, which includes visuals of rainstorms or sunshine, offers predictions of people's finances based on the past six months of their spending, saving and cash flow habits, and then
The PFM-related apps are somewhat reminiscent of offerings from Simple, Moven and PFM vendors like Banno, all of which are
In designing iGaranti, Curtis said time was spent brainstorming consumer profile types (such as a college student) and what apps they would need in their day-to-day lives. "We forget the bank exists and think about their money," he says. "Good designers are capable of empathizing."
The broader goal of iGaranti is to shift the digital banking experience to more closely match actual life by offering practical help.
The customizable app model is applicable to other countries, argues Curtis. To date, however, the idea is largely unexplored in the U.S. market, excepting some tangential developments: There are PFM providers that
Meanwhile, international institutions have started applike stores for customers. Credit Agricole, a French bank, created an online marketplace to