Citibank Tests New Balance-Checking Feature in California

It seems like everything’s a little easier in California (especially when it’s below freezing in the eastern United States).

New York-based Citigroup Inc. released a major update to its mobile apps — version 6.0 — last week, and a major new feature is the ability to check account balances without logging into the app. But it’s currently only being beta-tested in California.

The other major banks that offer this feature are Union Bank and Bank of the West, both based in San Francisco and with users concentrated in the West. Los Angeles-based GoBank also offers the slide-for-balance feature to its small mobile userbase. Citibank does these other banks one better by displaying credit card balances as well as deposit account balances in its slide-for-balance feature. It joins Barclaycard in offering this to credit customers.

Melissa Stevens, director of global internet & mobile banking, told Bank Innovation that the feature, called Snapshot, will “definitely be rolled out [to the rest of the country] this year, and relatively quickly.” The bank is watching how it is used and checking feedback from users first of all, but also from bankers and customer service agents, to see if any adjustments need to made, in both functionality and messaging. When it occurs, the rollout will be national, not in stages, Stevens said.

Stevens also described what the mobile team does the day an app is launched. “There are three things we watch: logins, performance and feedback.”

“Logins” are, of course, how many people download the app and log in. “Performance” is how users succeed in logging in and performing transactions, which varies on iOS and Android. (iOS usually does a bit better, but this app update saw “a huge improvement on Android-side performance,” Stevens said.) “Feedback” refers to app store ratings and comments, social media mentions and customer service contacts. With the most recent launch, Stevens said there were “not an abnormal amount of calls” to the call center.

The mobile app will be marketed in television advertising with Citi advertising, in particular, during the Sochi Olympics over the next several weeks. Two of the TV spots slated for the Olympics feature the mobile app, Stevens said. It will also be marketed in branches and via digital channels, including YouTube.

Stevens emphasized that digital and mobile, in particular, are taken extremely seriously at Citibank.

“We were the first bank to roll out a mobile app, in 2007,” she said, and she pointed out that Citi’s advertising over the last year has highlighted digital banking capabilities above all. Something Californians know best.

Learn more about what’s next in banking at Bank Innovation 2014 on March 3-4 in Seattle. Request an invitation here.