Is Turmoil is Boosting E-Banking Usage?

Fiserv Inc. recently conducted a survey and found that economic turbulence is driving more consumers to bank online.

Seventy-one percent of respondents said they were watching their finances more closely than a year ago. Of those, 75% said they use online banking; 28% said they were using it more often than a year before; 44% said they were using it the same; and 3% said they were using it less. Use of other channels, such as automated teller machines, call centers, and branches, declined and use of mobile banking was essentially unchanged.

Sixty-three percent of survey respondents said banking online gives them a greater sense of control over their finances.

The October survey of 1,009 online U.S. adults was conducted by Forrester Research Inc. of Cambridge, Mass.

Todd Lesher, the president of the electronic banking services unit at Fiserv, of Brookfield, Wis., said in a press release Thursday, "This survey indicates that online banking is still a great opportunity for financial institutions looking to strengthen their ties with consumers." From American Banker article.

Finovate 2008 | Wesabe

Presenter: Gabe Griego, VP of Marketing

Notes from the Presentation: Wesabe was the first to market with money management tools and community finance. Money is hard to talk about and with the product they have the ability to share insights with spending decisions. New homepage that brings to life some of the new things with Wesabe. They have been innovating with Twitter – you can Twitter information into Wesabe – gave an example of a taxi ride as an expense. They don’t believe that product managers should tell you how to manage your money. The Wesabe product allows you create your own tags – and your sub level tags. Exciting part they highlighted was taking the API to the people in a UX experience, not needing coding and you can compare to other Wesabeans. The product did not appear to be complete as noted by the presenter. Going to build a graph gallery through the user community and share them with every individual.

Interesting Industry Note: Founder and former CEO of Corillian Corporation (acquired by CheckFree) Ted Spooner is now the CEO of WeSabe.