Spar Nord offers access to hundreds of digital services through collaboration with IFTTT, a Silicon Valley-based company.
As the first bank in the Nordic region, Spar Nord will make it possible for customers to connect their banking business with hundreds of digital services via IFTTT.
In the near future, customers of Spar Nord can get their Sonos speakers to inform them when their wage has been paid into their account by playing a particular song. Or have their Philips Hue lamps light up in red colours if they are in their overdraft. Or get an overview of their expenses in Google Sheets automatically. As the first bank in the Nordic region, Spar Nord has initiated collaboration with one of the world's largest connection platforms, IFTTT, offering their customers integration between bank accounts and several hundreds of digital services.
- The decision to explore integration between customers’ accounts and a wide range of digital services is an important milestone in our Open Banking strategy in which we work to provide our customers with secure digital solutions that personalises their interaction with the bank, says Senior Vice President of Spar Nord Ole Madsen and continues:
- With IFTTT, we can provide our customers with an opportunity to add additional value to their financial oversight by enabling integration with other services, while simultaneously offer us insight into completely new ways of banking.
By establishing personalised connections across different services, customers can, as an example, create their own bespoke overview of deposits into and payments from their bank account. Triggered by actions in the real world, these connections are from the outset only limited by the imagination of the individual and the ability of the services to communicate with each other. Examples of this may be:
● If an account is in overdraft, the amount will automatically be deducted from another account while creating a task on the phone named "Update Budget."
● Encourage the cardholder to save up money through notifications of goals achieved.
● An automatic update of a Google Sheets budget with recent posts or specific areas such as car and food.
● Block ones debit card if the cardholder is in a specific area, or inform the cardholder about the balance on their food account when they shop for groceries.
Through this, IFTTT is capable of offering insights into the behaviour of customers when it comes to utilising their bank, while furthermore provide a unique way for Spar Nord to closely follow the evolution of customer habits, in particular the wishes and needs regarding the customer’s financial oversight.
"We believe everything works better together and we're excited to welcome Spar Nord to IFTTT," said Linden Tibbets, IFTTT CEO, "Spar Nord's customers can now connect their bank account with every thing on our rapidly growing platform, unlocking valuable new experiences with their favorite apps and devices."
Initially, Spar Nord will enable customers to acquire information concerning their balances and transactions via other services, while access to the payment component is currently a work in progress in cooperation with the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority. In the longer term, the ambition is to allow a significant part of the features of the mobile bank to also become available through IFTTT such as the ability to block payment cards. Therefore, a part of the development will also be undertaken in collaboration with customers so that the service will be adapted to reflect the needs and personal wishes of the users.