Imagine a world where anthropomorphic, bean-shaped citizens sail between forested islands, help locals plant trees, steer race cars through a paved course and ride jet skis in cerulean blue waters.
That world is an online reality, designed by a community bank to educate visitors about digital banking and fintech companies.
Coastal Community Bank, based in Everett, Washington, has launched a 3D online game called CoastalWorld to market the bank's fintech partners' services to players. Anyone can create an avatar on the game's website to traverse the animated world, complete minigames and quests for points and engage with fintech companies like Aspiration, Bluevine and Prosper.
President Curt Queyrouze and Chief Digital Banking Officer Laura Byers said the bank created CoastalWorld as a marketing platform for its fintech partners. The main goal of the site, for now, is driving engagement and building trust with Coastal Community Bank and its banking-as-a-service business.
"Even though we're a bank, we can put something out there that [customers] engage in," Queyrouze said. "Then we build, with the customer, a digital persona. Eventually, we expect to find out what your hopes and dreams are, but mining your transaction data to find out about your financial life isn't the best way. You get a lot of insights, but you don't get a real view of what the person is about. CoastalWorld gives us that better opportunity to engage and then let you self-drive what you're interested in."
Queyrouze added that he thinks embedded finance is a key part of the future of banking, and that the industry hasn't been delivering on engagement enough. Byers and Queyrouze said they wanted to create a way to connect with consumers outside of a traditional website or mobile app, both which are generally driven by specific activities, like paying bills or checking a balance.
Coastal Community Bank is an active participant in neobank and fintech partnerships, including offering credit and debit card sponsorships, business lending and deposit services to fintechs. Queyrouze is also part of the Alloy Labs Alliance bank technology consortium, which last year
"I think that goes back to the whole idea of, really, embedded banking is bringing a unique set of products and services and providers together in a way that consumers can learn more, choose more, find the best fit for themselves," Byers said. "And we have a really great set of partners, and each one of them offers unique and different kinds of products. So bringing them all together in a different way allows us to co-market for them, but also is a benefit for them being partners with us."
Gamification isn't new to financial services, but typically the strategy is used by larger banks for financial education and savings. Dylan Lerner, senior analyst in digital banking at Javelin Strategy & Research, said it's impressive and unique that a smaller institution is using gamification as a marketing tool.
"This was actually something really cool," Lerner said. "Because first of all, it's a small community bank leveraging technology to tackle an industry problem in a really innovative way. They're not just sitting on the sidelines watching the big banks play ball. They're actually jumping into banking-as-a-service, and creating their own game."
Lerner said it's increasingly difficult for banks to get their brands in front of consumers in a saturated market, especially for neobanks and fintechs that only exist online, and smaller banks, like the $3.45-billion-asset Coastal Community Bank. The virtual CoastalWorld, modeled generally off of the San Juan Islands in Washington state, provides a whimsical setting that meets visitors where they are, he said.
Big banks have been working on savings and literacy games, and even their own virtual worlds, but the strategy's popularity has accelerated in recent years, Lerner said. Last month, Charlotte, North Carolina-based
Lerner said in an interview last month that he thought Long Game was interesting, but wasn't incorporating "habit-forming gamification," or offering adequate rewards to customers.
The bank's new Long Game app rewards users for saving and dangles the chance to win cash prizes.
CoastalWorld rolled out last fall and, prior to the bank's promotion of the site, has been getting about 600-800 visits per day, with users spending six to eight minutes on the game, Byers said.
Coastal Community Bank worked with French gamification studio Merci-Michel, which has also made gaming projects with Lacoste, L'Occitane and Play-Doh, to design and create the online platform. CoastalWorld was also awarded Website of the Year in 2022 by the CSS Design Awards. In a blog post, Merci-Michel said it took on the project because the bank's concept seemed novel.
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CoastalWorld is a closed system, unlike virtual worlds in the metaverse, but Queyrouze said he thinks wider scale metaverse adoption is on the horizon, and wants the bank to be "on the cutting edge of putting more control in individuals and less control in institutions."
Information about each fintech in CoastalWorld is delivered by non-playable characters, and many of the minigames, such as a timed car, jet ski and bike races, are connected to specific brands.
CoastalWorld currently offers four islands and features just over a dozen fintechs, but Byers and Queyrouze said the development of the game will be iterative and agile. They plan to expand and modernize CoastalWorld, which could include evolving beyond just digital marketing.
"We do see a roadmap that includes some financial education," Byers said. "I can envision a world where you have a smart financial education that's gamified and interactive, and allows [users] to say, 'Here's where I am in my life. Here's what I want to learn about.' And it picks up on that and keeps giving them the tools as they evolve and interact with different partners and aspects."
Coastal Community Bank isn't looking at CoastalWorld as a way to drive customers back to the bank … yet. Queyrouze said the game is about researching engagement.
"We want to develop and build a trusted place," Queyrouze said. "Banking is based on trust, and that's our focus. That's our [objective and key results], not the ROI. We believe the ROI will come naturally once we've really leveraged that, 'here's a place curated by Coastal Community Bank with vetted partners, and a better way to go about managing my financial world.'"
