Wachovia Corp. began offering a Spanish-language version of its Web site last week, but it’s not quite like the English-language version.
For one thing, even though customers can read about various products in Spanish, they have to switch back to English if they want to carry out any transactions.
Wachovia says it views the Spanish Web pages as a key way to court Spanish-speaking customers, but it has no plans to introduce any online banking applications in Spanish.
And Wachovia is hardly alone. At Web sites for Wells Fargo & Co. and U.S. Bancorp, online banking pages switch unexpectedly from Spanish to English when the customer initiates a transaction. Charter One Financial Inc. customers are also shunted from Spanish to English if they try to start a transaction, but a pop-up box appears to tell them how to contact its Spanish-speaking call center or print out a Spanish application form.
Perhaps the punch line is that even at Banco Popular, the subsidiary of Popular Inc. of San Juan, the interactive demonstration of its transactional Web site for use outside Puerto Rico is in English only. (The online banking service itself is available in both languages.)
Only a few large U.S. banking companies actually offer Spanish-language transactional capabilities, and even at those that do, the breadth of the service can be spotty. For instance, Citigroup Inc. customers can log on in Spanish and may then be asked, in Spanish, to approve the terms of a user agreement — but the lengthy legal form itself is presented solely in English.
Then there are banks like PNC Financial Services Group Inc. that are trying to court Spanish customers through avenues other than the Internet, and those that have introduced Spanish-language Web pages primarily for marketing purposes. But some industry experts say that these banks are not doing enough to attract the large and growing Hispanic population that would welcome the chance to pay bills and view account balances online in their native tongue.
Wachovia, which is based in Charlotte and has a large network of operations in the South, has made numerous efforts to attract Hispanic consumers. Among other things, it has designated 300 branches as Hispanic Financial Centers, each staffed with at least two bilingual employees.
Jorge Moller, the vice president who heads the program to court Hispanic customers, said the Spanish-language site is aimed at meeting the specific needs of that customer segment, such as detailing the documentation requirements for recent immigrants who want to open an account. Customers can also enter questions in Spanish, which are routed to a Spanish-language customer service center in Miami; bank representatives can follow up — in Spanish — by phone or by e-mail.
The Web site is “one of the first signs that shows our commitment to the Hispanic segment,” Mr. Moller said.
However, Matthew Josefowicz, a senior analyst with the Boston market research firm Celent Communications LLC, said, “If you have a Spanish-language 800 service and Spanish-language branch staff, you should have Spanish-language” Internet banking. “It’s not like your Spanish-speaking customers are not using the Internet.”
Mr. Moller said a third of all Hispanics in this country use the Internet daily. And that number is growing. Mr. Josefowicz said the growth rate in Internet adoption among Hispanics was 26% between 1998 and 2001, the fastest rate of any ethnic group.
Adding some Spanish-language Web pages with information is not a big challenge, he said. However, this task is typically the responsibility of the marketing department, which has neither the authority nor the budget to make changes to an online banking site. Moreover, online banking, even in English, is difficult. Many banks find it hard enough that they hand off the task to an outsourcer.
Wachovia recently signed an online banking deal with Corillian Corp. The vendor is currently developing a Spanish version of its online banking software in response to requests from a few customers, but Mr. Moller said Wachovia has not made a similar request, and his company is not planning to offer any Spanish online banking services.
Virginia Garcia, a senior analyst at TowerGroup, the Needham, Mass., unit of MasterCard International, said updating an online banking system to include another language can be difficult and expensive. If the bank built its system without concern for supporting multiple languages, it may have to rebuild the system from scratch to offer services in Spanish. She estimated that the cost of translating a program could range anywhere from $100,000 to $1 million.
Though it can be tough for a bank to justify that kind of expense, the effort could deliver a loyalty dividend, she said. “The U.S. Hispanic market is a very loyal market. … They will stay with a bank forever.”
Providing complete Web banking in Spanish could be a simple way for community banks to secure customers in Hispanic-populated areas, she said. “If they have this capability, they’ll eat the big banks’ lunch in that market.”
Many of the biggest banks have only limited Spanish capabilities, but a growing number of small and midsize one are offering Spanish-language online banking services.
Digital Insight Corp. has made a full Spanish translation in its online banking software available for four years, and Ryan Berryman, the Calabasas, Calif., vendor’s director of Internet banking, said 2% of his customers are using it.
“We had a lot of customers specifically pushing us for the functionality,” Mr. Berryman said.
Financial Fusion Inc., which is owned by Sybase Inc., built Banco Popular’s bilingual banking site.
Ms. Garcia said that Hispanic customers may want online banking sites in Spanish, but international money transfers, which allow them to send money to their home countries, are even higher on their wish lists. Bank of America Corp. does not offer Spanish online banking, but its Spanish Web pages offer an online version of the SafeSend automated teller machine service for transferring money to Mexico from a credit or debit card.
Wells Fargo has a similar product that allows money transfers to Mexico, Ms. Garcia said.
Cross-border money transfers could help banks attract new Hispanic customers, especially immigrants, who largely “have an aversion to banks in general,” Ms. Garcia said. “You have to get the folks in through the money transfer business.”
