Ok, ok, we know banks aren’t cool. Trust us on this one.
US Bank wears the mask of a respectable super-regional bank. But behind that stolid exterior, it is anything but ordinary. With a mobile banking experience that is a pacesetter for larger rivals and a dynamic innovation team, US Bank is blazing a trail in banking that is the envy of the industry.
“Don’t think of us as a bank,” Dominic Venturo, the bank’s chief innovation officer, said last year. “Think of us as commerce. We are experts in payments and enable commerce.”
For example, in a particularly unbankish move, Venturo and his team launched the service Peri about a year ago, which allows users to snap pictures of items and then buy those items in their US Bank mobile apps.
US Bank was early to recognize the value in the smartphone camera, and still leads the industry in image-based banking, using the camera beyond check deposit and bill pay to features such as account opening and balance transfers, and more is in the works. More is always in the works at US Bank. It has the scale to fund cool things and the courage to, well, try them out.
And in an industry still facing abuse in the court of public opinion (“greedy, irresponsible,” etc.) US Bank is performing well for investors, but not too well. It may take wild risks in the innovation sandbox, but the bank’s foundation is solid. Here’s CEO Richard K. Davis speaking to investors on the bank’s most recent earnings call:
We’re not going to disappoint, we’re not going to surprise, we’re not going to get complicated, we’re just going to get it out and do a little bit better than everyone else on all the basic tenants.
A little better than everyone else — bam!