Like My Postbank Cards, which we wrote about last year, Garanti Bank's Flexi Cards allow customers to personalize the look of their bank cards. But Garanti takes the concept a bit further: customers can develop their own banking product.
Flexi Cards are Visa cards that let the cardholder make a few key decisions, allowing them to set over ten parameters. When applying for a card, customers can manipulate variables like reward rates and types, interest rate and card fee. The rewards system is especially flexible, not only letting customers determine reward ratio and type (cash or points), but also enabling them to choose which payments will earn them extra rewards: whether it's broad categories like restaurants, or specific stores like Zara.
Interest rate, bonus rate and card fees are selected by sliding bars that render various combinations of rates and fees. Card fees, for example, can be pushed back to zero by committing to a monthly spending minimum. A lower interest rate leads to a lower bonus rate, etc. Lastly, after making serious decisions about financial terms, customers can design their own card, choosing from different colors and a gallery of images, or uploading their own image. There's even the option of picking a vertical card, which is a world's first for Visa.
Opportunities? While customers appreciate being in control and creating a tailor-made card, inside and out, the bank is able to test various value propositions, gaining valuable insights into which customer segments choose which options. Self-segmentation through ultra-personalization. ;-)
Website: http://www.flexicard.com.tr
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It's been done by Postbank (netherlands) and my guess is it has been done by many others before.
Still it is one good way to create a bond between a somewhat impersonal bank and its clients.
But this won't go for the originality price.
Sven, thanks, yes, quite a few banks now offer personalised credit cards, though the Garanti card goes beyond uploading your pics: it actually allows users to set over ten parameters (the rewards system is especially flexible, not only letting customers determine reward ratio and type (cash or points), but also enabling them to choose which payments will earn them extra rewards: whether it's broad categories like restaurants, or specific stores like Zara.)
Even that may not be completely new (see other comments), but it's definitely more than most other banks manage to offer their clients.
Reinier, do you work for the company? I was to thrilled to see yet another leap of genius from my old friend Ferit.
Customized!!!
I love these cards, especially the one with having your kid's picture as large as it displays. Does anyone know where I could obtain such a card in the United States? Mark
tracyinfo@gmail.com
Personalized design is not the most important thing here.
What is realy awesome about this idea is self-segmentation - you won't get such truly and thought-through answers during any focus groups or researches. When you pay people (or reward in some kind) for taking a survey, they feel obligated to give you the right answers, not to mention all the other factors that make researches not perfect. And here customers give you 105 % true answers and if data is processed correctly it can be a huge support for marketing and/or product development.
Hi Christina, To answer your question -- Reinier doesn't work for Garanti, but *is* trendwatching.com and Springwise's founder.
This idea has been around for simply ages and to frank it does not really work because the card industry generally is so profitable that lets say someone who used their card to borrow regularly worked out that he would be better off with a very low rate ... all the card company would do to maintain their margin is hike the fee to a commensurate level. Its also very very rare to find consumers who actually the use the functionality regularly (although they'll all say that it sounds like a good idea in focus groups) and finally its incredibly dificult to market and explain effectively ... in tests the jump in call centre volumes explaining how eveything works is painfull.... although its not as creative from a product sense.. if the bank works hard at targting their marketing and goes with segnmented offers to cretian profile groups they'll do a lot better.
In the US
First National Bank of Omaha (personal & gift)www
Advanta (business cards)www.advanta.com http://www.oneofacard.com/main.asp
are offering customized card service.
This is a much better way to personalize your card.
CreditCovers : skins for credit cards.
A very similar idea (based on a Mastercard) was introduced already in 2002 by the UK company Royal and Sun Alliance. Their MORE THAN credit card (www.morethancard.com) also provided customers the opportunity to create their ideal credit card.
Customers could choose their own APR, cashback, servicing options and annual fee to suit their needs as they change over time -- also using sliders etc!!
I have featured this example since years in my presentations, but just had to learn that the company stopped this offering. Reasons unknown.
Also, EO.N failed with the idea of custom electricity products, very similar approach. So while I totally agree that this is a great opportunity, I think the execution is still not really thought-through.
Frank Piller | August 30, 2006 7:13 PM