The word Omni Channel has a new dimension. Where it used to mean seamless access for a customer across all the channels they wanted to interact with us on, it now means collaboration across other industry interfaces.

Banking has always been pretty innovative when it comes to creating new channels.

• When Bank of America started the Keep the Change program, it linked together retail and supermarket shopping with savings and investments.
• Citi and others launched online shopping marketplaces where loyalty points and discounts could be easily and almost seamlessly garnered by online shopping.
• In the past couple of years, at least one bank in Russia has linked savings directly to the level of fitness activity a customer performs.
• There is now a startup called Clink that is targeting millennnials along similar lines as the Keep the Change program from BoFA. Clink brings together investments and retail spending.

With the rapid speed of innovation today, this is truly the age of partnerships. And it means that the banks traditional channels may recede in the background for day to day customer experience and engagement. They will probably need to create, augment and supplement interfaces that customers are more used to in everyday life. Some digital developments that will aid this move are API access (lot of banks are already starting to do this) and the increased use of distributed ledger technology (blockchain) to help more straight through processing.

Its a great way to get in front of the customer experience cycle again!