Banksquare: the new sharing service from your bank

 
We've talked a lot about how banks are behind the mark when it comes to social media.

As regularly lamented on the Finanser, the lack of any blogging from any major high street bank in the UK is a shame.

And most banks use Facebook and Twitter just for PR and marketing purposes.

There's hardly any real customer engagement here for dialogue with the bank.

No wonder I called the social media book we recently released: Socialising the Antisocial Bank - Converting the antisocial bank by digitally connecting with customers to become part of their community.

But even with all this discussion about social finance, there's little happening in the UK amongst mainstream banks in this field.

This will change though and, when it does, all of them will be in there facebooking and twittering and blogging.

So let's shake things up a bit and look at the next generation of bank statement.

How exciting can that be?

Well a lot more exciting than it is today.

Here's my bank statement online:

Boring isn't it?

It's even worse on the mobile:

A year ago, I talked about integrating Google maps into bank statements.

A year later, my bank statements are just as boring as ever.

It just goes to show that all the bank did is take the old paper statement and replicate it.

Dull, dull, dull.

And they're not very informative either.

Telling me I used an ATM or POS, or giving me confusing statements that don't give insight is not impressive in this information age, especially when banks are meant to be in the information business.

For example, like most other folks, I spend half my time wondering whether I really used that ATM or trying to work out whose paid what to me and who hasn't.

Then I go into my social world and it's gone one step beyond basic transaction services.

In Foursquare I can find out where all my mates are and what they're doing ...

And in Blippy, I can see what they're buying and where ...

At some point, banks will incorporate these features into their services, and it would be pretty simple to do.

For example, on my bank's iPhone app it would just be adding geo-locators for each transaction:

And if I clicked on any transaction therefore, I would see the location of the purchase plus any related information ...

Potentially even seeing overlays of information, with feeds coming into my bank statement of related activities found in Facebook and Twitter, and special offers, discounts, coupons and more ...

Ah well, one day ... 

 

Meanwhile, if you are a banker and want to know more about Foursquare and Blippy, watch the videos below.

Foursquare introduction

 

 

Blippy introduction