Following Samsung, Google and Apple the recent announcements by Facebook, to start offering a payment system via its messenger app, and Microsoft show that the traditional banking playground is undergoing massive technological change.

At OnQue Digital one thing we found particularly interesting within the Facebook launch documents was their Mobile only screenshots, a very clear targeting of their platform.

The Bitcoin cryptocurrency has also been around since the start of a tectonic change which we believe will redefine the banking industry. The changes that are being made and those that are to come within banking and finance will bring significant opportunities to the marketing world. 

Since the fall of Lehman Brothers, the Madoff scandal and the Global Financial Crisis (including our own scandals here in Australia), a group of individuals and companies have been making significant moves to evolve, and in some case disrupt, the way banking works. Australian futurologist Brett King has been predicting changes in banking and is now up to Banking 3.0. 

We believe one of the great benefits of digital transformation, across all areas of life, is clarity. For marketing this includes clarity of where we buy, what we buy and more importantly why we buy. 

The banking industry has quietly been at the forefront in the changes which determine how we track consumers and their transactions. Banks and syndicated data have been combining the power of service providers (a topic for another time) and analytics and marketing companies (such as ours) to provide value to a small number of corporate clients who now can benefit from the clarity that (big) data analysis is now bringing.

What does this mean for you as a consumer, your company and the big banks? 

As with most transformations this is going to take some time and we will probably go through some of Gartner’s hype phases. However when we hit the high growth adoption phase that will lead to transformation in commercial banking and finance we see the following driving consumer, corporate and government change:

• Visibility of where the money goes, this would include who is funding your loans and where your retirement savings are being invested
• Your banking records will belong to you, as will your clinical records, eventually
• You will see where your data is being shared and analysed
• New markets will be created based on new value streams (such as social scoring and new loyalty points – imagine if brands could make a marketplace out of their true customer loyalty)
• There will be a hybrid of centralised and distributed marketplaces, allowing for different levels of transactions and analytics, driving shifts in what local and global commerce makes sense  
• Companies will drive a direct to consumer and individually targeted approach, using loyalty, rewards and competitions/gaming to deliver within their own brand as well as cross brand ecosystems. Examples of this are already being driven by one of our partners, Beam Wallet.

This is a complex topic and as we have a lot more thoughts on how these changes will affect you and us as consumers, we have decided to break this topic up into a few parts. We also have a short video outlining some of things we are doing in digital marketing for banks.

If you have any comments or questions on what you think about the changes in banking and its effects on marketing please let us know in the comment section below.