BankAmeriDeals Rolls Out to All 50 States
Bank of America’s version of Groupon has rolled out to its customers nationwide this week.
BankAmeriDeals, the BofA program, rewards online bankers with cash back based on their transactions. Customers sign in to their online banking accounts and click on the merchant discounts they want. Then, when customers swipe their debit and credit cards at participating stores, they receive cash back accredited to their accounts the next month.
BofA, the second largest financial institution in the United States by assets, first announced the pilot of the program in January. BankAmeriDeals is built with white-labeled technology from transaction marketing vendor Cardlytics.
“Customers want convenient ways to shop and get relevant deals,” BofA Spokeswoman Tara Burke told Bank Innovation this past spring. “We know our customers want this. They want to save money [while] they are still shopping.”
BankAmeriDeals is also available on BofA’s mobile banking apps.
The expanding effort points to the growing trend of banks and issuers gunning to improve customer shopping experiences by offering discounts funded by merchants. Banks hope the discounts will enhance loyalty and foster card swipes. And banks, as gatekeepers of transaction data, can provide more relevant deals than outside players. Sorry, LivingSocial, not everyone wants to play a game of golf.
Of the banks we’ve spoken to regarding their merchant-funded reward efforts, including Ally Bank, Wells Fargo, Regions Bank, Mechanics Bank, among others, the FI consensus is that day-to-day expense items like food appeal most to their customers. In BofA’s promo of BankAmeriDeals (see the video below), the bank showcases consumers securing deals on restaurants, sporting good retailers and pet stores.
In a report released last year, Aite forecasted that revenue from the merchant-funded incentives market would exceed $3.5 billion by 2015, with the card-issuer revenue exceeding $1.7 billion that same year.
