By Mary Auestad Arnold
In what may well be a financial industry first, $532 million Vantage Credit Union, St. Louis, launched tweetMyMoney at 8:30 a.m. yesterday via--what else?--a tweet. Two hours later, EVP/Sales/Lending/Marketing Eric Acree told me, "We're in the news in four countries."
tweetMyMoney allows members who use the CU's MyVantage online banking to conduct six transactions: monitor balances, holds, check clearing, ATM withdrawals and deposits, as well as transfer money between their own accounts, but not to other members, a security precaution. Acree says the CU chose these functions because they represent what people are most interested in when they are "on the go."
"Coming out of the gates, we wanted to keep it simple," so members may track just five types of deposit accounts. Functionality may expand in later releases.
Members enroll in the program from inside MyVantage by entering their Twitter user name. Someone who isn't already on Twitter can link from MyVantage to establish an account, then enroll in tweetMyMoney.
"The biggest challenge, Acree believes, "is making people understand how it works and the security we have in place to protect them." That security involves the fact that members will be "direct messaging our online banking server" with a balance query, for example. The balance would then be returned in a direct message reply containing a six-digit authentication code generated by home banking.
The code is a new MyVantage feature designed to combat text message phishing. In developing it, Acree says, "We realized it had multiple applications." It will let "members know the message is authentic whether it's from tweetMyMoney or an e-alert."
tweetMyMoney, which was developed by the CU's Technovation Team, is a "way to serve a certain segment of members who enjoy using Twitter," Acree says, but it's "not the silver bullet for mobile banking and that's not our approach. We were searching for a way to be different and unique and differentiate ourselves."
Next the CU will look at a Facebook application, then possibly an iPhone app and SMS texting if there is member demand. Twitter and Facebook come first, Acree explains, because "the only out-of-pocket expense was salary to our developers. We're looking for ways to bring solutions to members without expensive overhead to us. With SMS texting, there is a cost associated with that, so we have to ask, financially, does it make sense?"
Offering m-banking via social networking certainly makes sense for Vantage CU's member demographic. Acree says the CU's members are "younger than the industry average, about 39-40. Every year our membership age is going down," he says, with 70 percent of new membership growth under the age of 40.
How is the CU attracting all these young members? "I wish I knew the answer to that question," Acree replies. "We have tried to uncover what it is. The only thing we have come up with is that St. Louis area banks seem to charge a monthly fee (for youth accounts). We don't charge a fee; we don't have a minimum balance."
To maintain that advantage, the CU is "putting a lot of our attention and resources in making sure our social media strategy resonates with our members. If we are attracting this type of member, we want to make sure we hang on to them and not lose them."
Vantage CU is marketing tweetMyMoney through Twitter and its own Web site. Will news of the service go viral? Seventy click-throughs of the original tweet in the first 90 minutes seem like a good sign, not to mention retweets by Banking Review and others.
"To our knowledge, this is the first banking service based on Twitter in the world, Acree says. "We're in the first position on this, which is fun. This is what energizes us."
Read about a CU that developed its own iPhone app.
