I've been involved in Brett King's new venture, Moven, since its inception and was pleased to see the new renovated version won Best in Show at Finovate yesterday in San Jose.  In a key announcement, Moven has partnered with Accenture to roll out their capabilities worldwide and, in what many are referring to as Bank 4.o, demonstrated key new features including links to the Apple Watch and a feature called Impulse that locks up your money unless you explicitly unlock it.

Rather than talk about this in depth, good friend  Jim Marous provided an in-depth review on the Financial Brand, and has kindly allowed me to replicate a short summary here.

New Moven App Encourages Savings, Eliminates Product Silos

Moven introduces a mobile banking application that uses real-time contextual insight to encourage savings, discourage impulse purchases and provide emergency funds seamlessly on a mobile phone or wearable device.

The introduction of its new Impulse Savings feature was one of several major expansions and enhancements to Moven’s overall experience that was introduced to another sold out crowd of bankers, investors, news media and others interested in fintech innovations. Moving beyond providing insight into spending behavior, Moven customers will have access to tools designed to encourage savings behavior and thus improve overall financial well being.

The Impulse Savings app from Moven introduces several innovative feature including:

• ‘Lock Away Savings’ Prompts: With ‘lock away savings’, users are notified whenever their spending behavior has placed them far enough in the green (below their average spending) that it makes sense to set money aside. Moven gamifies that moment, turning that typical impulsive spending moment into a savings moment. This savings feature is perfect for the wearable form factor.

• Visual Wish List Leveraging Pinterest, etc: The ability to set up a visual wish list of items a user wants to save for, as well as the option to quickly and simply curate these directly from a user’s Pinterest board and others in a few simple taps.
• ‘Break the Glass’ to Unlock Savings: When users have reached a savings milestone, they can access their savings by tapping the app interface three times to simulate ‘breaking the glass’ – employing simple behavioral gamification to make the user think before spending their hard earned savings. If they proceed, their savings funds are immediately transferred into their Moven spending account for their desired purchase.

Integrated Share of Wallet Expansion Potential

The majority of today’s mobile banking applications do a terrible job of selling additional services based on contextual insights. Banking in general is steeped in traditional product silos and have a difficult time viewing their products from a consumer perspective (selling loans as opposed to providing real-time borrowing solutions).

To combine checking, savings and lending services, Moven unveiled its Emergency Cash feature to provide users the spending capacity for their regular purchases beyond current balances. The emergency cash notification leverages GPS-technology to alert users when funds are low as they enter their favorite or most frequented places.

Using Moven’s real-time behavioral insights on a user’s typical spending habits at any location (i.e. average grocery shopping bill), users receive a notification offering them a real-time overdraft opportunity. This notification comes with a transparent upfront fee, to help bridge the gap between typical spend at the location and their current balance. The emergency cash advance is settled when the next deposit is made.

The benefit of this integrated solution is a breakdown of traditional product silos and the ability to increase share of a consumer’s wallet in real time, eliminating the traditional friction of an overt sales process.

“With Moven’s contextual savings and credit, we’ve eliminated the need for separate products like checking, savings, overdraft, credit card and fixed deposits. We’ve replaced these silos with contactless payments and a real-time receipt, impulse savings, emergency in-store cash, wish-list savings and eventually, the potential to gamify your savings rate through referral,” stated King.

Expansion Beyond the Smartphone

One of the early pioneers in integrating banking beyond the smartphone, Moven will enhance many of these compatibilities with the benefits of wearables. Impulse Savings will be made available via wearable devices, such as the Android Moto360 and Samsung Gear smart watches as well as the Apple Watch.

Users on all these devices will be able to receive instant receipts, see insights on their spending habits via the Spending Meter® and be gently nudged to save their spare cash via the new Moven apps. 

While Moven was initially introduced as a mobile-based alternative to traditional banks, it has recently moved beyond its home market of the U.S., partnering through licensing agreements with TD Bank in Canada and WestPac in New Zealand. To expand this initiative, Moven and Accenture announced a collaboration in deploying Moven’s experience-as-a-service platform at Finovate.

According to King, the alliance with Accenture will help Moven expand the distribution of their next-generation digital platform globally, reaching tens of millions of users worldwide.

To read the full review and details about Moven's enhancements, read the complete in-depth review on The Financial Brand.