BillShrink, the creator of the popular money-saving search engine, today announces the launch of StatementRewards, an extension of BillShrink's powerful platform that can be incorporated directly into the online bank statements of more than 200 million U.S. bank accounts and cardholders.
StatementRewards enables banks to drive customer profitability by growing spend and enhance loyalty by offering substantial savings on their customers' most common expenses.
Through StatementRewards, financial institutions have an unprecedented ability to deliver in-statement, money-saving recommendations and loyalty merchant rewards to their customers. Bank statements have advanced from static summaries to an interactive tool that highlights areas where the consumer can save - such as wireless bills or television service, two of the largest recurring monthly bills for most Americans - and will generate personalized recommendations based on an individual's usage or purchase behavior with merchants.
BillShrink's robust transaction identification engine classifies purchases into specific merchants and categories and then accurately determines what content to display. BillShrink's patent-pending matching technology leverages knowledge of both historical and current transactions to present consumers with the most relevant savings available.
StatementRewards seamlessly incorporates BillShrink's ability to analyze and customize recommendations into the statement environment with lightweight technology integration, the simplest of which is a single line of Javascript. The platform offers participating banks a depth of controls, so that they can determine the type and number of rewards on a statement and can exclude some based on value, category, merchant, timeframe, and more. Banks control the look-and-feel of rewards and can also market in-house products, including cross-sell promotions.
BillShrink has 94% coverage of the top 100 U.S. merchants with a number of top-tier brands offering exclusive offers only available through StatementRewards. BillShrink's merchant relationships are rapidly growing and the company will make further partnership announcements in the near future.
"In our research, nearly 90% of consumers indicated they would switch their spending to cards or bank accounts that offer this functionality and 68% said they'd switch to a new card just to get a service like this," said Schwark Satyavolu, co-founder and CEO of BillShrink. "StatementRewards will give financial institutions a powerful way to increase spend and loyalty by providing customers with rewards and savings while they are considering their finances."
When viewing their statement, users can activate real-time, contextual rewards based on the personalized analysis of their monthly transactions. For example, people who frequent a national retailer, or a related store, are able to receive discounts. Or a transaction for a latte might trigger a $25 loyalty reward for the cost of $10 at the user's favorite coffee shop. Similarly, gas purchases generate cheaper gas station recommendations.
Since the user is already logged into their account, they can easily take action on any of the savings presented, all without leaving their card statement. Users customize their statements to display preferred discounts and control the number and type of savings presented.
For financial institutions that leverage the Yodlee platform to power their online banking and billpay, BillShrink is also announcing that StatementRewards is now compatible with the Yodlee platform. It will be available via all the standard BillShrink integration options and also as a bank brandable FinApp in the new Yodlee FinApp Store.
"Working with BillShrink to integrate their rewards and analysis platform further supports Yodlee's core goal to drive online banking revenue and help banks engage their customers," said Joe Polverari, Yodlee's chief marketing and strategy officer.