Banking is central to the financial livelihood of our daily lives. A few years ago the case was that people would have to wait in lines in front of bank branches so that they would be able to deposit, withdraw, send money or simply check their balance. Then digital transformation of everything came and banking now can be easily done digitally through your phone or web browser.
Managing your money today can be as simple as logging into your bank’s application. See your balance, your expenditures, pay your bills and your friends and even invest in your favorite Cryptocurrency.
Core to customer’s digital banking needs is the ability to better control and manage their funds easily and efficiently. This comes at a critical time when a study conducted by FICO in the USA has shown that 53% of the people that took part in the research claim to be having issues being on track with their finances. 64% state they have no written financial plan and 36% of them don’t have an organized monthly budget.
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Receiving alerts about their funds can be extremely convenient for customers as it allows them to have an overview of their funds. Imagine a banking application sending an alert when an account has dangerously low balance. This would save customers from making transactions that would send their account into overdraft and incur them extra fees. Many banks today offer this feature where customers are being notified when their balance falls below a certain threshold amount.
One of the most annoying issues that people face with their finances is they find it difficult to check and manage how much they spend. There are, however, digital banking features that have proven quite useful to customers when it comes to monitoring. These include recurring bill payments, spending reports showing them exactly how much they have spent and for what. Customers can track how much money they have spent for their groceries, transportation, utilities etc. Add to that the intuitive feature that a few banks offer of setting a limit to how much money they wish to spend for each category. Combine these two features and customers can have a powerful tool to control their money.
The ability to save has been paramount for customers since the first savings accounts were launched. Today, digital banking features have made saving easier, without necessarily having to own savings accounts. Banks apps allow them to set goals for their saving and even recurring payments towards that. Some banking providers even offer the helpful feature of rounding up an amount and sending the spare change into a spare change account. A lot can be saved just by putting together their spare change from every purchase. Others provide the feature of creating saving pockets that correspond to bills that they need to pay so they never run out of money and can’t pay them.
It used to be the case that people had to go over their finances and manually with pen and paper and a calculator set their monthly budget. This is not the case anymore. Today, banks offer their customers to set specific budgets. Whether it is a budget for their utilities, their groceries or entertainment, customers can set a specific budget for how much they want to spend on these. They can conveniently and in a few steps organize their monthly spending for each category without going overboard.
A quite useful feature that has come to become essential for many customers is the feature Split the Bill. With this feature customers are able to Split a Bill with other users, sharing an amount they paid. There are a couple of ways this can be done by banks which is discussed extensively in our post about US banks that include it in their digital banking offerings arsenal. Essentially customers that go out or order pizza at home can then share the amount they paid between them through their phones or their browsers.
Safety should come first, especially in transactions. For that there’s the block and reorder feature. Nothing provides customers assurance that their money will be protected after they lose their card or discover a suspicious activity in their accounts than being able to cut off the diseased ‘limb’. Customers are able to block their card in a few steps and be sure that their accounts will be safe. What’s even more exciting is having the ability to unblock it or order a new one and digitally add it to your wallet and pay the very same day. There are a handful of US banks that provide this and you could find them here.
Subscriptions have been steadily becoming the main form of payment for many platforms worldwide from video streaming, to discount shopping and business. Customers nowadays have to manage many subscriptions for various aspects of their daily lives and keeping up with them can be quite confusing. Luckily, there are banks that have provided a fitting solution to that: a subscription management feature. Through that customers can easily manage, cancel or set up their subscriptions. This way customers can have control over their monthly subscriptions and swiftly cancel any that they do not use anymore, and keep track of their total spending for that.
These 8 features can immensely help customers with their daily money management needs. From making quick transactions, paying bills to tracking their spending and shielding themselves from fraud. These are features that provide assurance and trust towards a bank. Customers will be motivated to make the bank that includes all or most of them their primary bank.
Want to know more about the banks that included such features and how they have incorporated them into their digital banking structure?
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This article was originally published on March 17, 2021 and was updated on December 14, 2022.