Alternative marketing thinking

Banking solutions in rural India are about to get a new lease of life with a wireless technology solution deployed by NXP semiconductors. Already tested as a pilot in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, this path-breaking technology involves a banking representative carrying a mobile phone, a smart card reader and a finger-print reader and going to villages where people can use these to make transactions. The incorporation of the finger print recognition was necessary since a lot of the population in rural India is illiterate and does not use signatures. So will this open up a whole new world of possibilities for rural India? Slowly, but surely. With Indians being very comfortable with mobile phone technology, avenues such as these will only see them take a step towards their own convenience. SBI, one of the banks who have tried this technology already has a wide reach in the country with the maximum number of ATMs. This kind of technology will only see it reach reaching further. A recent interest from State Governments in this technology can also see a possible extension to employee and pension schemes. So not just banking, rural India could get a lot going for them on the mobile phone.

Janet Bodnar, a known face in financial expertise has always come out strongly about letting kids use credit cards. In a three year old article on Kiplinger, where Bodnar serves as a deputy editor, she spoke about how teaching kids smart money management does not necessarily mean that they need to use a credit card. So how big is the market for young (or maybe much too young) credit card users? Pretty big, we’d think. We stumbled upon a website called Credit Card for Kids, claiming to give advice to kids and their parents about what credit card is best for them. All this, under the umbrella of “encouraging responsible spending”. But when should kids be taught about responsible spending? Agreed that parents might want to take this step when their young ones are about to go away to college and start living on their own, but would kids younger than that also use credit cards as responsibly? Or even debit cards for that matter? Lloyds TSB was recently criticized for issuing Visa Debit Cards to kids aged between 11 and 15 years after a father caught his 15-year old boy buying Viagra, cigarettes and a fake id over the internet with the debit card. Maybe it’s time to go back to the old school of hard cash to teach our kids a thing or two about money.

The Graves County High School in Kentucky has something extraordinary going on for them. The school’s student-run bank is aimed at educating students about banking and making a profit. Chris Sanders, a 17-year old techie, is the President who took upon the task of automating all accounting functions. This would mean not just daily deposit and withdrawal transactions, but also processing loan requests, loading all customer data, allowing balance enquiries, etc. Sanders designed a Microsoft Windows based software platform that allows all this and more account management needs. The bank is essentially a hands-on learning platform for the Banking and Finance students of the school, who are also its sole operators. Duties are handed over to new students with each passing year and revenue is generated not just from the school, but also from other miscellaneous avenues like yearbook sales. Wonder how far this would go once the bank has an
online portal. Read more about this interesting project here.

Kids in Japan will learn to save in a new RPG adventure with the soon-to-be launched game, Bankquest. Kids can shove money into the slot of this piggy bank tower, allowing the game to progress, and can then buy weapons and armor to slay dragons and beasts on behalf of their chosen protagonist. The game comes from Takara Tomy, the leading Japanese toy and entertainment company that has give Japan some of its favourite toys and games. This latest fascinating game is played through a small LCD window mounted in the side of the bank. Buttons underneath the screen let players control the game’s hero as he fights his way through a monster-infested tower. More than slaying and fighting, the game is mainly an incentive to save: equipment for the hero, necessary to defeat the tower’s denizens, can only be purchased by putting real money into the bank. The idea of taking a piggy bank further ahead in a gaming avatar is certainly making it a fun way of collecting money. Due to release in August, one will have to wait and see how this picks up among the Japanese kids. Read more here.

Information is getting democratic, personal and ubiquitous more than ever and business operators are digging into this trend. Visa is paying Facebook $2 million to advertise their new service, Visa Business Network, designed specially for Facebook users. Visa will give away $100 advertising credits to the first 20,000 US start-ups that download its service via Facebook. This online service is designed to help small firms run their businesses more efficiently. The company aims to tap into Facebook’s global audience of 80 million people. About 80,000 small businesses already have profiles on Facebook and thousands of Internet programmes have been developed specifically for the social networking site. But the majority of these applications are based on social activities, such as gaming, listening to music and picture-sharing, rather than traditional commercial activities. It will be interesting to see how this plan unfolds, even as small business operators find more ways of getting closer to their audiences. Many other companies like Visa may also follow suit to tap the power of social networking and that might come as a relief to sites such as Facebook, who would only welcome the extra income. More on this from Finextra.

Some banks look at the most unconventional ways to satisfy their consumers. Wells Fargo roped in Pentagram to design a new User Interface for all its ATMs. Straying away from the usual screen that aligned task buttons only on the left and the right, this new UI saw the entire screen being used up with new visually simplified buttons. The new ATMs have two main features that got everyone raving about them. First, the fact that customers could deposit a stack of checks without sealing them in envelopes made processing time shorter and lowered costs. Up to 30 checks can be inserted at one time, and all checks will be scanned individually and be updated with status. In case the scanning identifies an error in a certain check, the customer is asked to fill in the missing amount. All steps can be reviewed with the history button that allows for a look at the previous steps. The second outstanding feature is an upgrade of the existing Quick Cash button. This feature has been allowing Wells Fargo customers to withdraw an often used amount in one single step, instead of going through a multi-step procedure. Designer Holger Struppek, part of the design team that worked on this in Pentagram talks more about the new ATMs here.

Seth Godin, marketing expert and author of several bestselling business books has a few tips for people who blow up all their money on credit card. In an interesting perspective that is funny but true, he talks about how borrowing money makes sense only when you are paying for things that will increase in value. He has a plan that people, especially youngsters, can follow to get their credit card bills back in check, and live life the rich way. Read his simple, yet out of the ordinary post here.

Check out MoneyAisle the next generation online market auction where banks actively bid against each other for every individual customer request about bank CDs and High Yield Savings Account. The customer, of course, emerges as the real winner, as he is the one who’s offered the best rate available in just a few minutes. The auction is on demand, available to customers 24/7 and is absolutely free of cost. MoneyAisle reverses the traditional auction method by making the sellers bid, and not the buyers. Watch the video on the home page about what people are saying about this very fresh concept, and read the blog here.

If you thought only athletes start preparing for the Olympics, think again. Banks and mobile operators have joined this league too. The Bank of China and the China Everbright Bank are offering their customers special Visa Olympic-edition credit cards. Started way back in 2005, the Bank of China’s Olympic cards offer a dual currency function, a revolving credit option, access to the Bank of China’s special customer network and other services; the China Everbright Bank is issuing its Visa Olympic credit card in a vertical design displaying the five Fuwa mascots. Around 200,000 cards have been issued to the latter’s customers starting August 2007. China Mobile is marketing a gift box containing six prepaid telephone cards, which is the fourth set of commemorative cards for 2008 Beijing Olympic Games launched by China Mobile. The Olympic smart cards are supplied by Giesecke & Devrient, a leading provider of smart card solutions.

Wachovia, one of America’s leading banks, has launched its Way2Save, a high-yield, automatic savings tool designed to help Americans save money. Way2Save claims to help people save money automatically, by using their Check Card the way they normally would and offers a competitive interest rate of 5% APR and real incentives for saving money, like a 5% bonus. However, would this really be the way to save for America? The fine print may not suggest so. While the yield per year may look rather promi-sing at 10%, the maximum one can transfer each month is only $100, totaling a yearly saving of $1200. The 5% bonus is actually a first anniversary special that drops to 2% in year 2 and 3. The other part of the account that has created more confusion is the $1 transfer to savings with every debit card purchase, automated debit, and online bill pay. Though many have assumed Wachovia is paying a $1 bonus on each transaction, the $1 is simply a transfer from the user’s checking account to his savings account. Wachovia will apply the 5% bonus to those $1 transfers, but that’s only $0.05 per debit, or $1/month pre-tax for an active electronic banking user making 20 transactions per month. So will the end result be saving? Something to think about, and while you’re at it, read more.