10 Ideas: Things you should be able to do through your internet banking (but currently can’t)

This week you’ve been tasked with coming up with 10 things you should be able to do through your internet banking (but currently can’t).

This post is a collection of responses from the weekly 10 ideas email. If you’d like to be more creative every week, you can sign up to receive the email here.

Some of my favourites this week:

• Huge pain point: Move all your direct debits linked to a credit card to the new credit card when you get a replacement for a lost or stolen card. Could simply be an option when you sign in after registering the new card. Surely the bank knows what direct debits you have in place
  Creative! — Create your own currency. Create a blockchain template that allows individuals to create a currency that mirrors actual money. Move that money around your family and friends and create your own ecosystem. When someone wants to get their cash push the settlement back through your own mastercard / visa card that the bank has issued. The system would need to build in a way of reducing the available credit like a pre-authorisation. Alternatively it could be a feature of all cards issued by the bank and the overall credit limit could be adjusted at the time of card issue
• Real time comparison shopping: Money watch — when you use your card / post a transaction get a suggestion as to what others like me had paid for the same item — ie did I pay too much and where should I have shopped instead. If it took off the banks could start to sell recommendations just like Google sells add words

The full list:

Transfers and payments

• Add a message field to payments that is longer than a few characters ( possible with new real time platform) and make this available via internet banking. Integrate this messaging system with Whats App, FB, Twitter, Insta, Snap then you could pay someone and have the payment also send a message on your favorite platform at the same time — ie they wouldn’t need to check the payment had been made they would know and could also have a laugh at whatever the message was you sent
• Phone to phone payments transfer via Near Field Communication
• Requesting personal payments
• Audio QR phone to phone payments
• Automate payments that happen regularly — So it’s not a direct debit, but on say the 5th of every month you get a notification on your iPhone saying “Would you like to pay $x amount to Real Estate agent today”
• Move all your direct debits linked to a credit card to the new credit card when you get a replacement for a lost or stolen card. Could simply be an option when you sign in after registering the new card. Surely the bank knows what direct debits you have in place
• Verification of who you’re making a payment to. The BSB should verify against an account name (reduce errors in transfers)
• Add a currency exchange engine for small payments that does not have a massive spread in it — ie replace ozForex and others overnight
• Venmo-type c2c and c2b payments. BSB and Acc numbers are stupid
• Better management of subscription payments
• Linking in-built card payments to wearable tech (like Woolworths rewards)
• ‘Uber-pay’ experience for bars and restaurants. Already exists, but via third-party apps. Could be done by the banks. Similar to how iPhone asks you if you want to share wifi info with someone on the same network now, you could do this with bills in place you’re eating.
• Small use case, but bill splitting is still a pain-in-the-ass and doesn’t need to be,

Savings

• Auto saver — Click this option to have 1% added to everything you spend and then have this 1% put into an account that you can only access in 12 months — amazing you have saved money you didn’t know you had
• Acorn-type ‘round-up’ payments should be a feature not another whole app and company
• Acorns should be a feature inside every bank app. Saving made easy and painless

Credit

• Top up credit line on your house — Where values move up and the bank has an existing mortgage that is performing use data mining on property sales data to offer you a limit increase on your mortgage
• Peer to peer loans, set up with time limits, reminders

Cash flow management

• Automatic Expense categorisation and budget planning (coming soon to CBA app)
• Manually select expense category upon payment
• Budgeting, consolidation of your spending tools. Helps you save based on your behaviours (algorithms).
• Money watch — when you use your card / post a transaction get a suggestion as to what others like me had paid for the same item — ie did I pay too much and where should I have shopped instead. If it took off the banks could start to sell recommendations just like Google sells add words
• Better cash flow analysis — a monthly snapshot of spending.

Partners

• Link your insurance provider to your fitness activities to help lower premium
• Bank has partnerships with airlines. Option to lock in price upfront and pay monthly or pay in full if the fare drops below the original rate
• Weddings — there is a feature where people can transfer money. Bank can provide incentives, points to go towards flights for honeymoons etc.
• Partner with a recruitment platform. You can be notified jobs if you option in, as they have your current/previous company and salary records
• People who regularly transact at venues or with certain retailers have the ability to move to a subscription plan, that’s offered directly within the banking app. The upsell is from the bank to the retailer — improving how smooth cashflow is.

Security

• One ID — Since all banks and various others need 100 point Id checks then why not centralize this function (just like Veda did with credit scores) so that when I want to interact with any Oz bank I can take my ID from one to the other. Banks won’t like losing sticky deposits but together they could corner the ID market and charge all other Id users (telco, retailer, utilities, landlords) a fee for removing the hassle of the ID process — this way they would take a cost centre and change it to a profit
• Sell anonymity — At the moment banks give their credit card data to 3rd parties for analysis (eg NAB / Quantium). Let users either have their data redacted or pay them for their data
• Know where you are through the app, so immediately know if a transaction that was made overseas was you or not.
• Retina recognition for locking/unlocking app
• Digital account creation using drivers license or similar
• A completely anonymous bank that never sells data and never upsells — based on how Duck Duck Go have built a similar model in search for people who really don’t want their transactions or data shared

Donations

• Real-time giving — How might a banking app make it easier for me to give to charities and causes on a time or event basis? “Open your banking app now to give to the xxx relief effort”.
• In the same way acorns allows you to round up transactions for savings, you should be able to round up transactions for donations.

Rewards

• Extend the points offer that the bank gives you in frequent flyer to include recommended people — ie if I recommend a customer to the bank I use then I get 10% of the FF points the person I reccomended would have got — strong incentive to recommend a bank

New services

• Banks helps set up a digital Will. They distribute your money for you when you die, auto transfer rules
• Tinder style dating matched on your salary and net-worth
• Bank plays role of realtor and bank. Provide less fees on buying homes.
• Birthday app — for gift giving, notification to friends when its their birthday, everyone can elect to gift any amount and the birthday person can spend how they like
• Automatic tax planning from within the banking app. Knows your purchases and approximate salary. Encourages all banking to move through one bank if you can give good approximate tax advice.
• Comparison of market rates for credit cards, mortgages, etc on a monthly basis.
• Some financial education — ability to choose short videos on topics of interest.
• Include a Life portal — personal shopping, flight bookings, theatre tickets, etc. Personal admin covered.

Analytics

• Access all financial information in the one place — super, all credit cards, savings, insurance, investment portfolio, etc.
• Insights — banks probably know us better than we know ourselves. How can they provide us with useful data to help us live better lives? Save more, spend less etc.

Other

• Create your own currency. Create a blockchain template that allows individuals to create a currency that mirrors actual money. Move that money around your family and friends and create your own ecosystem. When someone wants to get their cash push the settlement back through your own mastercard / visa card that the bank has issued. The system would need to build in a way of reducing the available credit like a pre-authorisation. Alternatively it could be a feature of all cards issued by the bank and the overall credit limit could be adjusted at the time of card issue.

This post is a collection of responses from the weekly 10 ideas email. If you’d like to be more creative every week, you can sign up to receive the email here.