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First Citizens Bank recently announced a first-of-its-kind program that gives“free money” bonuses to eligible customers who make frequent check cardpurchases.

First Citizens FreeMoney Bonus Program is a new checking account-basedprogram that rewards customers when they use their personal Visa Check Cardfor non-PIN transactions. Once a monthly qualifier is met, the bank deposits $1for each eligible transaction of $25 or more into a client’s special savingsaccount.

“Unlike other check card programs, every $1 bonus is on us,” said DougSprecher, spokesperson for First Citizens. “What sets the FreeMoney programapart is that customers use our money, not theirs, to save, so it gives themanother opportunity to build their savings in this tough economy.”

Source: Marketwatch.com

3

Citi and MySpace are launching a credit card through which users canredeem reward points for song downloads, as well as access comedy andmusical shows and a chance to win a secret show.

In addition to rewarding points in traditional ways (such as purchases andpaying one’s bill on time) the Citi Forward by MySpace card also rewardsconsumers for “socially responsible acts” such as donating to local fooddrives, switching to paperless transactions and installing energy-efficientlight bulbs.

Source: MediaPost.com

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College students are in a tough place these days with the economy in ashambles, loans drying up, and Mom and Dad’s 529 in the tank. But manyare turning to friends and families for donations and loans.

GreenNote connects needy collegians with friends and family who makeloans at a reasonable set interest rate of 6.8%. CollegeDegreeFund.comfacilitates direct donations, typically between $10 and $100. AndGradeFund.com is designed to help good students get financial gifts forachieving good grades.

All of these sites evade SEC scrutiny by trying to amp the “lending a hand”aspect of family and friends, rather than acting as investment tools forwould-be loan sharks.

A whole new generation of online tools is allowing desperate consumers towork their networks for what they want and need. Taking the profit motiveout of peer-to-peer lending through regulation may slow its growth, butconsumers are finding good work arounds.

Source: Iconoculture

5

In an innovative travel promotion that puts the traveler in total control of his journey, HSBC created a build-your-ownmagazine kiosk at Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 1.

For two weeks, travelers passing through were given the opportunity to become editors-in-chief of their travel readingmaterials. After perusing a selection of loose-leaf articles featuring various topics like arts, media, culture, health, sports andpolitics, visitors mixed and matched what they wanted and took their selected pages to the “binding bar.”

During the course of the pilot, 2,030 customized magazines were created and more than 7,000 travelers visited the stand.

Control is one thing today’s travelers have little of. A customized element during the travel experience is not onlyempowering, it shows a brand that illustrates a strong understanding of consumer relevance.

Source: Iconoculture

6

Bank of America’s foray into mobile banking is more than a gimmick, and its iPhoneapplication is more than just a reason to issue a press release. Underlying all of themarketer’s moves into mobile services and marketing is a key insight: Give peoplemore control over their banking on their own terms, and you’ll win their loyalty.

BofA is one of a small but growing group of marketers who have figured out thatmobile marketing isn’t about advertising. That’s not to say mobile advertising will playno part, but that mobile, like most things digital, is not a channel so much as a wayconsumers live their lives and, consequently, a way marketers have to conduct theirbusiness.

The biggest U.S. bank launched its mobile Web site in 2007, becoming one of the firstmajor U.S. banks to invest in the platform, positioning it to take advantage of the nextfrontier: mobile transactions. BofA was the first to launch an iPhone bankingapplication, today the most-downloaded financial app. With more than 2 million of its59 million customers using its mobile banking application, BofA can lay claim to havingthe highest adoption rate of mobile-banking usage among its competitors.

Source: AdAge.com

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Colorado’s FirstBank made a bold contemporary statement ofsorts during baseball’s opening week. Flying above Coors Fieldduring the Phillies-Rockies game was a small plane towing ahuge sign that read: “This is the closest thing we have to aprivate jet.” No cushy executive perks or bailout bucks forthese toque-topped, frostbitten local bankers. In your face,Bank of America!

Actually, FirstBank’s earlier effort inviting customers to bank inski masks probably came closer to capturing the tenor of thesetense times.

Source: Adfreak.com

8

Walmart is already riding a massive wave of Great Recession popularity thanks to its focus on one simple goal: Savingcustomers money. In February 2009, the company rolled out an even more aggressive program aimed squarely at thefinancial services industry. Along with its low-cost check-cashing and remittance services, “Operation Main Street” isoffering Walmart customers $3 prepaid reloadable Visa cards with no overdraft fees.

In addition to the debit card, Walmart is partnering with Visa to offer consumers “Visa Practical Money Skills For Life,” abroad financial-literacy program.

Walmart says 35 million low-income Americans are unbanked or underserved by the financial services industry, and that asimple prepaid debit card can save them $50 million per year. Walmart continues to push the envelope in helping middle-and low-income consumers save money. The company has been slowly but surely moving into financial services to get to theheart of the matter, and to make it easier for customers to spend money there.

While plans remain mysterious about whether the company will get around to offering its own “clean” credit card, that maybe moot as consumers have moved en masse from credit cards to cash and debit cards.

Source: Iconoculture

9

MasterCard Worldwide has teamed up with Blaze Mobile tointroduce the Blaze Mobile MasterCard PayPass mobilepayment sticker.

The small mobile payment sticker can be affixed to anymobile device, enabling it to be used for “Tap & Go”purchases at any of the over 141,000 merchant locations thataccept PayPass. The mobile payment sticker is tied to aprepaid account and is issued by MetaBank.

“This is part of our overall mobile strategy to let people payusing their mobile phones at the point of sale,” said SimonPugh, head of mobile for MasterCard.

Source: Mobilemarketer.com

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If you haven’t been following Twitter the last few months, you may not realize it now has almost eight million monthly uniquevisitors. That’s almost double the traffic it had just two months ago and a nearly a nine-fold gain from a year ago. To put thattraffic in perspective, it’s more than half that of The New York Times and slightly more than banking giant Wachovia.

Financial institutions are pretty new to the micro-blogging platform. In a recent search, we found 15 U.S. banks and 22 creditunions with active Twitter feeds. There were also nine international banks for a total of 46. Click here for a list of these 46institutions.

Participating in Twitter is a low-cost entry into social media that can actually help save a customer relationship or three.Compared to blogging, it is much less labor intensive. It's also less of a marketing platform given the 140-character limit forposts.

Source: Netbanker.com

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