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In the UK, Open Banking has so far focused on making customer bank data more portable and accessible. As we move towards the September PSD2 deadline, all payment accounts will be brought into scope.

Open banking has always had ambitions beyond bank and payment data. It’s a vision of consumers possessing greater control of all personal financial data, in turn driving greater competition across all financial services.

Therefore, in some respects, ‘open banking’ is a limiting moniker. ‘Open banking’ is not just about bank data. It’s also about loans, pensions and mortgages.

‘Open banking’ is now evolving towards ‘open finance’ – giving consumers access to all their financial data.

And it’s the world of pensions that looks most likely to be opened up next.

The logic is sound. The average person in the UK has 11 jobs in their lifetime. That could mean 11 different pension pots to manage and monitor by the time you retire.

The FCA, in conjunction with The Pensions Regulator, has already identified several key issues. These were published in their joint regulatory strategy at the end of 2018.

They include tackling how pensions are looked after and managed, as well as the need to enable consumers to make good decisions in terms of their pension planning.

Anyone who has more than one pension pot knows that managing them is not straightforward. It’s time consuming to keep an eye on them and both their charging structures and performance are complex and sometimes opaque.

You may be able to get better performing funds or lower fees and charges elsewhere. But there is no mechanism for making these kinds of comparisons easy.

So that’s the next frontier for open banking. Or open finance, as we should perhaps call it. Imagine being able to compare your pension’s performance and value in the same way that you compare insurance providers today. A world where all of your pension data is portable and can be instantly judged against every other provider.

It will revolutionise the pension industry. Pension providers will have to become more proactive and competitive or risk disintermediation by the raft of fintechs and other providers shaking up how consumers can more easily manage their money.

Work is already underway in this area. The government’s “pensions dashboard” is specifically designed to create a platform on which savers can easily view and manage their retirement pots.

Already, companies in the industry are showing interest in trying to make pensions data more open and accessible. Last year, PensionBee, a pension consolidation platform, said it was working on integrating with banks and money apps, with users able to see their live pension balance within the money app, Yolt.

While such initiatives are encouraging, they likely impact only a small portion of total savers up and down the country. The game-changer will be the involvement of the larger, established pensions providers, and the opening-up of pensions data more broadly.

The delivery of ‘open pensions’ will likely take time but it will benefit from the experience and regulatory framework that the UK’s Open Banking work has delivered. There are some clear lessons to be learned, some of which – trust, awareness, customer experience all underpinned by a clear value exchange – I’ve discussed before.

It doesn’t end with pensions. There’s scope for the entire financial services industry to benefit from greater access of customer data. Given the scale of such product complexity and opacity, particularly around things like fees and charges, it’s easy to see how a compelling offer to consumers could be developed.

Open Banking is dead. Long live Open Finance.

Nearly 14 months on from the launch of the UK’s version of open banking, we continue to move slowly towards its goal of creating greater competition in financial services by making customer data more portable and accessible. It’s less of a sprint, more a marathon.

But important progress is being made. Recently, M&S Bank introduced a new service that uses open banking to speed up mortgage applications. Customers can now use a secure open banking platform to share their financial records, rather than supplying current account statements manually.

However, great propositions are only one piece of the Open Banking jigsaw.

Our research has identified the key elements needed for the development of successful Open Banking products and services. Chief among them is the customer experience.

Put simply, a compelling proposition has to be backed by good user experience. There is little point stoking customer demand and interest if users are frustrated by a poor experience when they attempt to take advantage of the product or service.

Currently, the account linking process is a real friction point in the Open Banking customer journey. Right now, most users who start the Open Banking linking process don’t complete it.

That’s not a sustainable conversion rate for any business.

And that friction in the user experience is caused by a number of factors.

Most important is the authentication process.

The reality is that digital-savvy bank customers access their accounts daily using their mobile banking app. The painful experience of initially logging into the mobile banking application is a one-off event. Pin codes, fingerprints and facial recognition then become the log-in mechanism.

This means that bank customers now struggle to remember the assortment of customer IDs, passwords and memorable information required to authenticate their accounts. That’s the information that’s buried away in a lever-arch file or drawer at home.

But that’s the information that’s needed to link an Open Banking account for the CMA9 banks.

As a result, many Open Banking-enabled products fall at the first hurdle. Time-poor customers are giving up because the information needed to link their own account to the new service is not easily accessible.

Linking through biometric authentication, or other simple means, is key to conversion.

Compare the account linking process from the CMA9 to the account linking process for Monzo and Starling. They have created two-factor app-to-app authentication processes using QR codes and e-mail addresses which are easy for customers to use, but still safe and secure for account linking.

As a consequence, the Open Banking Implementation Entity (OBIE), the body responsible for the UK’s Open Banking standards, has created a set of customer experience guidelines together with a mandate for all CMA9 banks – the UK’s nine largest banks, all of which have been ordered by CMA to implement open banking – to have implemented app-to-app authentication functionality by mid-March.

The rapid roll-out of these user experience improvements are absolutely critical to the success of Open Banking. The whole industry is waiting with bated breath.

Manohar Reddy Dendi, Director of Engineering[/caption]After wrapping up a successful opening ceremony on February 18th, Cardlytics is proud to announce our official entry into Asia. Our newest office is located in India’s Sunrise State of Andhra Pradesh in the city of Visakhapatnam (Vizag)—a growing hotspot for Fintech innovation—and will help Cardlytics advance our research and development capabilities.Leading the day-to-day onsite management is our new Director of Engineering, Manohar Reddy Dendi. Manohar has more than 18 years’ experience in enterprise IT and software development. Prior to joining Cardlytics, he managed NCR Corporation’s Managed Services division for India and APAC.We sat down with Manohar to ask some questions about the new office.Why did Cardlytics choose (and how do you pronounce) Visakhapatnam as our first Asian outpost? MANOHAR: We get that question all the time. It’s Vih-shaa-kaa-puht-nuhm. Many of India’s brightest workers are flocking to Visakhapatnam—or Vizag as the locals call it—to help advance the Fintech revolution that’s transforming the region. As a company that cares about its people, our location in Vizag offers our employees and their families good medical facilities and world-class schools. It also has lower traffic and pollution compared to other cities in the country.Can you tell us more about the opening ceremony this week?MANOHAR: The grand opening began with a ribbon cutting by Cardlytics CEO & Co-Founder Scott Grimes and COO & Co-Founder Lynne Laube. Several other Cardlytics executives traveled to Vizag to share in the celebration and present Cardlytics’ 10-year journey as well as plans for future growth. Speakers included Scott, Lynne, Sathish Gaddipati (Chief Technology Officer), and Peter Gleason (President of International Operations). Also gracing the occasion were members of the Andhra Pradesh government, industry colleagues, university representatives, the media, and last but not least, our esteemed employees and their families.

The Cardlytics team, friends, and family celebrating the India Office Opening Ceremony[/caption]

From left: Peter Gleason, Lynne Laube, Sathish Gaddipati, and Scott Grimes[/caption]From a design and branding perspective, how does the new Cardlytics office compare with other office spaces in India?MANOHAR: When we set out to design the new office, it was important that our new space reflect our distinctive workspace in our Atlanta headquarters as well as the local ambiance. The result was a truly unique space, inspired by our collaborative spirit and desire to nurture innovation. The India office features colorful murals, spacious work areas, advanced technology, and a dedicated recreation area to give Cardlytians the space they need to grow and develop new ideas.

Cardlytics office workspace and mural in Visakhapatnam (Vizag), India[/caption]Are you hiring?MANOHAR: Yes, we are always looking for great talent and actively hiring for several positions in the Vizag office. I encourage anyone interested in joining the team to visit our website for the latest list of job openings.Interested in joining the Cardlytics team or in learning more about career opportunities in any of our offices? Check out our careers page.

The team testing out our new Cardlytics-branded rickshaw[/caption]

As the country gears up for this Sunday’s final showdown between the Patriots and the Rams, restaurants are kicking off a battle for football fans’ stomachs. To help restaurants score a win, Cardlytics analyzed restaurant and delivery spend during the week of last year’s Big Game. Here are some of the highlights:

The Feast of Champions

Fans’ favorite foods are as different as the teams on the field. While the Patriots fans in Boston overwhelmingly preferred pizza—spending 187 percent more at pizzerias the week of the 2018 game compared to an average week—Rams fans in LA indulged in tacos.

The Top 10

Fans in these cities provided the biggest boost to their hometown restaurants. The leaders on the scoreboard? Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Dallas.

Wings rule

Chicken restaurants in Atlanta—this year’s host city and Cardlytics’ hometown—saw a 128 percent boost in sales during the week leading up to the Big Game.

Want to win more share of stomach on game day, or any day for that matter? Contact us today to get started.

The 2018 holiday season is a wrap, and there are many lessons for retailers to apply to their 2019 plans. With overall holiday sales up 1.6% year-over-year from 2017 to 2018, here are some of the biggest takeaways for retailers looking to keep the momentum going well into the New Year.

1. Focus on convenience

U.S. online holiday shopping had a record-breaking season, and many traditional Brick & Mortars benefited from this trend by driving sales online. While in-store spend remained relatively flat, their online and mobile properties (think Walmart.com, Target.com, Costco.com) saw a 3.1% year-over-year increase in holiday sales. Brick & Mortar retailers should continue to play up their online channels while also emphasizing convenience for their physical locations: the hands-on experience and peace of mind when receiving your items on time and in one piece.

2. Make procrastinating easy

Retailers may be kicking off their sales earlier and earlier, but procrastination is still on the rise. Customers who rushed to finish their holiday shopping between Black Friday and Christmas had a major impact—both in-store and online. For online retailers in particular, Black Friday/Cyber Monday was more important in 2018 vs. the previous year, and continuing to offer quick-turn shipping brought them another final push of last-minute shoppers. Regardless of the season or holiday, appeal to procrastinators by highlighting store hours, inventory assurance tools, and shopping guides. Win more online sales by offering express shipping.

3. Win the hearts of animal lovers

Many shoppers spoiled their furry friends this holiday season. Pet retailers saw an increase of 7% in year-over-year holiday sales—one of the biggest increases of any category—beating out traditional holiday categories like children’s toys & apparel and department stores. Now with millennials as the biggest pet owning generation, we expect the trend of spending on the four-legged family members is here to stay (pun absolutely intended). Retailers can fetch more of this growing spend by providing quality products geared towards pets and pet lovers alike.

Want to put these insights into action? Contact us today to learn how Cardlytics Direct can help you identify likely buyers and drive incremental sales both in-store and online.

This week marks a year since Open Banking was introduced in the UK. Designed to create greater competition in financial services by making customer data more portable and accessible, many had high hopes.

The UK’s Open Banking initiative provided two elements that were missing from the initial PSD2 legislation, the EU’s own similar payments directive: a technical specification and a supporting regulatory framework. This made the UK the most advanced market for Open Banking in the world. As a result, other markets were keeping a close eye on progress to inform their own initiatives.

A year on, where are we now?

While most people knew that there wouldn’t be a ‘big bang’ moment, it’s fair to say that, on the surface, little has changed.

Relatively few compelling propositions have been launched and consumer awareness remains low. The mainstream financial services landscape in the UK looks the same as it did before January last year.

Other consumer-facing sectors, such as retail, were also expected to be transformed through access to Open Banking data, together with low-cost payment opportunities. Here, too, very little has changed.

Amid this gloomy outlook, we sought to find chinks of light. Open Banking has the potential to transform financial services, and more broadly how consumers engage with a range of other businesses. But this won’t just happen overnight. How can we get there?

Cardlytics recently commissioned a study to look at prospects for Open Banking a year since its launch. We asked bank customers who they trust with their data and what kinds of value exchange would turn heads.

In short, we were looking for Open Banking’s tipping point.

What we found were four areas that are key to reaching it: trust, awareness, customer experience, and value exchange.

Trust is the most fundamental issue. Over the last few decades, consumers have been warned not to share their bank details with anyone. Even though Open Banking provides a framework for consumers to safely share their data, old habits will die hard. Anyone who has tried the Open Banking process will, without doubt, have that moment of hesitation as they enter their banking details to connect their account to a third-party proposition. Customer experience will be key to overcoming this, but we should also consider some kind of ‘trust mark’ for the Open Banking ecosystem to help reassure.

Awareness is less about knowledge of ‘Open Banking’ as a phrase, and more about the propositions that encourage usage. Given the challenge faced by banks to engage customers beyond just functional operations, profile-raising campaigns will have to do a lot of the heavy lifting.

As mentioned above, key to the Open Banking success will be making the account-linking process simple, secure, and fast. We’re a world away from this. Improving it, through measures such as a consistent customer experience and biometric authentication, is essential.

Finally, the customer value exchange underpins all of this. The value exchange must be so good that consumers will put aside their initial hesitations and start connecting their accounts in order to benefit from new propositions. Therefore, it’s imperative to understand what resonates. We found that young people love daily rewards, while older consumers prefer a reduction in their household bills.

So, while little has changed, as we head into year two big opportunities do remain – for both banks and other brands – if these four areas can be addressed and, importantly, they can tap into Open Banking’s ‘tipping point’.

We’re in the midst of one of the dining sector’s most important times of year; but far from the festive period being the “most wonderful,” for many brands it can be a time of unease.

After allocating large amounts of their budgets towards holiday season marketing strategies, brands are eager to see results. But even if gains are made over Christmas, historically it’s tricky to hold onto new customers into the new year, even with January’s sales and promotions.

Customer attrition is a significant problem for retailers. This is particularly true of casual dining, where the post-holiday blues, and the associated diet and gym fads, leave restaurants feeling the pinch as consumers rein in after the festive excesses.

Coming at a time when casual dining chains are already struggling to stand out, this is a problem.

The post-holiday blues

It’s common sense and common knowledge that the Christmas season is a boom time for consumer spending. Generally, you might associate this with retail spending, or perhaps the spending that happens at pubs and bars. But casual diners also head out en masse over the festive period, with a higher total spend in December 2017 than in all but one of the preceding months.

However, our data shows that this trend suffers a sharp drop-off in the new year, both in the number of trips and the total spend. From December 2017 to January 2018, spending fell by 16 percent, while the number of transactions dropped by 11 percent.

This is a repeated problem for restaurants, who struggle to keep consumers engaged once the holiday season is over. This comes at a time when the casual dining category is already suffering, with average spend dipping 10 percent since 2015, according to a Cardlytics’ restaurant spotlight earlier this year.

Casual dining and customer attrition

Unfortunately, the issue of customer retention for casual dining in the UK is not unique to the post-Christmas period. Non-seasonal struggles in retaining customers persist for the high street’s restaurants whatever the weather. In fact, 55 percent of casual dining customers do not make a repeat purchase at the same retail brand within six months. This is known as the “leaky bucket” effect – where brands on-board customers at a high rate but lapse non-returning customers at the same rate. The “leaky bucket” slows business’ growth and is trending behind in the casual dining category.

There are three strategies that restaurants can implement to arrest this trend and keep the customers they earn, whether it’s during the January slump or after any other big event where volumes drop-off.

1. Win back dormant customers by providing offers or rewards for their business and prevent active customers from lapsing by ensuring your offer is competitive and appeals against other peers in the market.
2. Implement strategies that will lock new guests in for a second visit by giving them a reason to return in the near future, such as a bounce-back offer within seven days of their first purchase.
3. Work with providers like Cardlytics, who can keep customers engaged by automatically triggering offers for customers who may have lapsed.

Post-Christmas can be a tough time for the high street’s restaurants, however it need not be if you can effectively build on the success during the festive period. By working with a platform which can keep customers engaged, casual dining can make the new year just as merry.

Marketers: is customer acquisition on your holiday wish list this year?

Good news, there is a big opportunity to influence new customers as they rush to wrap up their holiday shopping these next few weeks. As shoppers branch out of their typical routines to find gifts for their loved ones, they are more likely to try a new retailer or category for the first time. While many marketers place emphasis on acquiring new customers, Cardlytics’ holiday purchase insights show that not all acquisition is created equal. Here are the top three things marketers need to know about customers who expand their shopping horizons during the busiest retail season:

1. Gifting categories see the biggest benefit from adventurous holiday shoppers

In 2017, Cardlytics’ purchase insights showed that gifting categories such as children’s apparel & toys, department stores, and sporting goods saw the highest percentage of new customers for the holidays. Meanwhile, new customers for personal purchase categories (think auto services, home décor, and beauty) account for a much smaller portion of total holiday customers.

For gifting categories, customers acquired during the holidays also account for a significant portion of total customers throughout the entire year. Retailers specializing in these categories should make the most of this opportunity by targeting their marketing broadly to drive more purchases from new customers.

2. New shoppers emerge in the eleventh hour

While there is opportunity for customer acquisition throughout the holiday season, retailers should expect the most traction later in the season as customers increasingly venture beyond their familiar go-to stores to check off the last items on their lists. Of all the holiday shopper types we analyzed, Procrastinators spent the most at new brands, averaging $500 per customer. In fact, the biggest category for customer acquisition during the holidays—children’s apparel & toys—saw its most significant spike in new shoppers the week before Christmas.

Marketers looking to attract new customers for the holidays should ramp up their marketing efforts in the final weeks of the holiday season. Appeal to last-minute shoppers by highlighting extended store hours, inventory assurance tools, and gift guides.

3. Don’t lose sight of building loyalty

Regardless of how new holiday customers impact your retail category, it’s important to remember that the majority of holiday sales are driven by customers who already purchased from the same retailers the previous year. Last year, the majority – almost 60% – of holiday sales were from repeat customers.

Personal purchase categories that see less of an impact from new holiday customers should especially focus their marketing efforts on increasing spend and purchases among loyal customers. This will help build consistent shopping habits for success going into 2019.

At Cardlytics, we use Purchase Intelligence™ to target likely buyers (both existing and new) and prove the impact of campaigns so marketers have confidence that their budgets are driving actual incremental sales. With no complex integration or training required, we can help you reach those last-minute shoppers as soon as 10 days. Let’s work together now to win more customers and ramp up your holiday sales in these critical last few weeks. After all, there is still a lot of shopping left to be done.

Want more actionable holiday purchase insights? Download our 2018 Holiday Spend Trends Report today.

As a marketer, some of the things I love most about my job include learning something new every day, telling stories, and working at the intersection of art and science to help our partners win. So it was a great pleasure to discuss these very topics with Renegade, LLC's Founder and CEO Drew Neisser during my recent trip to New York.

Our conversation covered a lot of ground, so I wanted to share my two biggest takeaways:

1. Creativity and data are not enemies

With so much data available to marketers, knowing how to make insights actionable can often feel overwhelming. Over the course of my career, I’ve learned that creativity and data are not at odds with one another. Instead, inspired marketers use their data to inform their creativity as they figure out what content would be the most compelling to the audience they want to influence.

At Cardlytics, we use machine learning and advanced algorithms, but we leverage these to figure out how to help our clients reach likely buyers. We pour a lot of creative energy into using our insights in innovative ways—whether it’s building an engaging targeting strategy or telling data-driven stories that help advertisers better understand their own businesses and opportunities.

For example, in our 2018 Holiday Spend Report, we found that traditional brick & mortar stores were able to slow their loss of seasonal share to e-commerce competitors by driving sales online. So how can marketers engage customers who value the convenience of online channels but are still paying attention to traditional retailers known for their holiday deals? One of our actionable tips from the report is to emphasize the respective convenience factors for both online and in-store channels in your holiday messaging. For online, focus on price matching, gift guides, or free shipping. For physical stores, play up the hands-on experience, verifiable quality, and easy gift returns.

2. Don’t limit yourself by defining “loyalty” too narrowly

Many brands understand their customers through robust CRM systems, but a lot of marketers only know their customers when they are shopping inside their four walls. To avoid leaving money on the table, we need to be thinking about loyalty on a broader, whole-wallet level. Ask yourself: where are my customers spending when they’re not spending with me?

One of our clients—a major auto parts retailer—assumed that customers who purchased multiple times a year were loyal to their brand. In fact, many of these “loyal” customers were actually heavy category shoppers. Using our Purchase Intelligence, Cardlytics was able to see that a full 40 percent of these frequent buyers spent more than half of their category spend with competitors. The retailer had a lot of headroom they hadn't been realizing. To grow market share, they opened up their whole media plan and began to target this “loyal” group. This campaign improved actual loyalty and drove an additional $6M in incremental sales.

When used the right way, data doesn’t have to be daunting. As long as marketers stay clear on the goals they want to achieve and the audience they want to address, data should help them feel empowered to try something new and push boundaries. Reach out to Cardlytics to learn how our Purchase Intelligence can help you make smarter marketing decisions.

Our full conversation is available on episode 104 of the Renegade Thinkers Unite! podcast—an amazing series of thought-provoking conversations with some incredibly inspiring CMOs.