Current: Bringing premium services to underserved banking customers
About Current
Current, a leading challenger bank based in New York City, serves U.S. customers who have been overlooked by traditional banks. Its proprietary technology enables faster access to money and allows Current to build products specifically designed to improve financial outcomes for those who need it most.
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Contact usCurrent becomes the first U.S. based fintech to launch a points rewards system based on debit cards. Using Google Maps Platform technology, merchants and customers can pinpoint the location of every transaction with unmatched accuracy.
Results:
- Enables innovative customer rewards programs with highly accurate location features
- Delivers an average of 10% cashback to members, higher than most rewards programs
- Increases the average value of purchases and frequency of customer visits to merchants
- Provides customers with more flexibility to track and manage their finances
Reward system participants get an average 10% cashback
While many of us take our banking services for granted, millions of Americans struggle to qualify to open an account with a traditional financial institution. This includes people living paycheck to paycheck, spending most of their earned income before the month’s end. Even when they do qualify for a basic account, such customers are often ineligible for premium services such as rewards and cashback programs, and may face ongoing overdraft charges.
One company that has stepped up to innovate banking is Current, a New York City-based organization, which is committed to giving “underbanked” groups access to services they need to better manage their finances. The company builds proprietary banking technology that supports a rich array of cost-effective banking services to customers, including automated clearing house (ACH), shopping rewards programs, and others
Most recently, Current launched a debit-card points platform, the first for a fintech in the U.S., which offers customers the ability to earn points that they can redeem for cash.
Building a fast-growing community of customers and merchants
Merchants participating in the cash back rewards program also stand to benefit from revenue growth driven by customers guided to the merchant by the mapping layer on the Current app. While merchants fund the incentives given to customers, they only pay for completed offers and verified transactions, making the initiative viable even at a small scale.
“Accurate geospatial information is essential for any bank looking to provide customers with enhanced services and insights into their spending and saving patterns. Our integration with Google Maps Platform is a major differentiator for us and offers our banking customers and partner merchants tremendous value.”
—Trevor Marshall , CTO, Current“For the program to succeed, every transaction must be attributed directly to the point of sale where a card is swiped so that merchants can determine the impact on their sales,” says Trevor Marshall, CTO, Current.
By adding Google Maps Platform to its existing attribution process, Current gives merchants confidence that transactions are located with 100% accuracy. “We looked at several location services and nothing came close to the scale and reliability of the information offered by Google Maps Platform,” says Aviv Gadot, VP of Engineering at Current. “There is no other solution that solves the problem of attribution so successfully.”
Gadot also stresses the importance of Google Maps Platform to the program. “Take the example of a chain of gas stations. The offer in Brooklyn is way lower than in New Jersey. You see significantly different economics at play, even from the same brand. If you mix up one outlet offering 5% with one offering 8% cashback, that’s a lot of money,” he says.
“We looked at several open location services and nothing came close to the scale and reliability of the information offered by Google Maps Platform.”
—Aviv Gadot , VP of Engineering, CurrentMarshall explains how Google Maps Platform products deliver an unfailing level of location accuracy through the Place Autocomplete feature. The service ‘fills in’ the missing Place Details helping locate participating merchants with pinpoint accuracy. “Using Place Autocomplete with location searching and place predictions means we can get to a Place ID, which is the gold standard for location accuracy,” says Marshall.
Accurate locations empower customers to better manage finances
By sharing this globally unique identifier with external partners, including merchants, Current gives all parties the confidence that transactions will always be attributed correctly. You can even determine the time from when a customer searched for an outlet on the Current app to the moment they arrived and made a purchase. “We can show the merchant that a particular sale came via a customer shopping the rewards program versus someone who would have come into a store anyway,” says Marshall. From the customer perspective, opting in to share their location ensures that they get the cashback reward.
Marshall also stresses the long-term benefits of the technology. “Google Maps Platform already offers powerful, versatile features and we’re confident this will only increase based on Google’s long-term investment in this platform.”
It also enables Current to accelerate its mission to offer high-quality banking services to people excluded from premium services. “Current now has a best-in-class pricing and rewards offer,” says Marshall. “We are able to get an average of 10% cashback to members, which is higher than most other programs, including credit card rewards programs.” The bank is also building out insights and reporting features to help customers budget and manage their spending based on dates, times, and locations.
“Google Maps Platform already offers powerful, versatile features and we’re confident this will only increase based on Google’s long-term investment in the platform.”
—Trevor Marshall , CTO, CurrentCurrent estimates, for instance, that members could save up to $165 per year on average just from points earned at gas stations. As for merchants, they are also reaping the benefits in terms of shopper purchases and frequency of customer visits. In the first week of offering points at 90% of their locations, one merchant saw a five times growth in spend versus the previous weekly average.
The adoption figures speak for themselves. Since the program launched, Current customers have earned points at more than 20,000 merchants. “Accurate geospatial information is essential for any bank looking to provide customers with enhanced services and insights into their spending and saving patterns. Our integration with Google Maps Platform is a major differentiator for us and offers our banking customers and partner merchants tremendous value,” says Marshall.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
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About Current
Current, a leading challenger bank based in New York City, serves U.S. customers who have been overlooked by traditional banks. Its proprietary technology enables faster access to money and allows Current to build products specifically designed to improve financial outcomes for those who need it most.