The Apple Card

Today we get to see the beginning of the rollout of Apple’s continued services expansion plan.

Introducing the Apple Card, a new credit card issued in partnership with Goldman Sachs, which goes into a “preview rollout” today and will be available to all iPhone users in the U.S. later in August.

Axios’ rundown on how it works: “At its base level, the Apple Card is an “iPhone-first” MasterCard that can be used anywhere Apple Pay or MasterCard is accepted.”

Though users can get a physical card, the Apple Card is “mobile-first” and customers use an iPhone to sign up for the card, view their transactions and pay their bills.

The physical card has a traditional credit card number on its chip and magnetic stripe, but that number isn’t visible on the card, and customers can provide a different one stored on their iPhone if they need a numeric number to give out.

Apple is saying the card will have no fees including no annual fee, no foreign transaction fees, and no late fees, and it doesn’t boost its interest rate if customers miss a payment.

Apple also indicated it would neither collect nor view anything about where you shopped, what you bought, or how much you paid.

We shall see if you can easily cancel those persnickety app subscriptions! 

IBM Helps ING DIRECT Canada Connect with Mobile, Social Customers

ING DIRECT Canada’s mobile application, developed with IBM, delivers customers with a dashboard view based on their most frequent banking activities.

IBM is making a fast start with its new “Mobile First” initiative, which is intended to help companies around the world bring all their resources together to strengthen customer engagement, whenever and wherever the customer wants, and on the customer’s favorite device, which is increasingly a mobile one.

IBM client ING DIRECT Canada is applying a “smarter commerce” approach to consumer banking with IBM’s help in meeting the growing expectations of its 1.8 million customers.

IBM announced today that it is working with the online bank to deliver innovative financial services that improve ING DIRECT’s customer experience including simplified account access across mobile devices and social media channels, voice recognition, and advanced security.

ING DIRECT Canada’s mobile application, developed with IBM, delivers customers with a dashboard view based on their most frequent banking activities.

Based on IBM software and services, these innovations support ING DIRECT’s Orange Snapshot initiative, designed to provide its clients greater control to manage their accounts within their increasingly mobile and social lifestyle.

Orange Snapshot gives mobile consumers a complete and simplified view of all their accounts, as well as bill payment and email money transfers, in two easy clicks.

This allows consumers to sign on once from their mobile device, saving time and aggravation from multiple log-ins.

Working with IBM, the bank’s latest mobile innovation allows clients to easily and securely access their ING DIRECT account information from within Facebook’s social networking site.

Clients who opt-in to this app are able to view their account balances, history and pending transactions as well as receive account notifications — real time messages automatically pushed to them within Facebook.

With security and privacy always top of mind, ING DIRECT plans to expand this application further to include transactions such as transfers, bill payments and email money transfers.

Furthermore, ING DIRECT allows clients to share their experiences through Facebook and Twitter to make saving money more intriguing.

In a recent survey, ING DIRECT learned that 52 percent of consumers were able to forego non-essential purchases when they could better visualize the impact of their spending habits.

IBM’s Smarter Commerce initiative is designed to help businesses better connect with the rising tide of digital consumers who prefer to buy through online, mobile and social channels.

It is estimated that there are more smartphones on the planet than humans. According to IDC, by 2016, more than 10 billion smartphones will be in use around the globe. In Canada, more than half of smartphone users bank from their devices — and that number grows higher when looking at users between the ages 18-34.

ING DIRECT continues to work with IBM in seeking new ways to connect to mobile applications in order to advance sales, manage secure transactions, and provide new insights about clients.

The bank has begun experimenting with new voice recognition capabilities on their mobile apps that will allow clients to conduct simple banking transactions by speaking rather than typing or the application can read account information to the customer.

ING DIRECT is also exploring the use of biometrics within their mobile apps for purposes such as client login to improve the client experience while maintaining the highest standards of security. Internal pilots are already yielding positive outcomes.

Recently, Forrester Research, Inc. recognized IBM as a leader in enterprise mobility services, according to the February 2013 report The Forrester Wave TM: Enterprise Mobility Services, Q1 2013.

Based on an analysis of 13 global leaders’ enterprise mobility capabilities and how they stack up, the report indicates that IBM “brings clients a world-class design agency combined with breadth and depth of enterprise mobility consulting both in terms of technology capabilities and global presence.”

You can go here to learn more about IBM’s “Mobile First” initiative.

Live @ IBM InterConnect 2012: A Q&A With Manoj Saxena About IBM’s Watson Being Put To Work

IBM General Manager of Watson Solutions Manoj Saxena is responsible for the commercialization efforts of IBM’s Watson technology globally.

This morning on the IBM InterConnect stage, IBM general manager for the IBM Watson Solutions organization, Manoj Saxena, explained to the gathered audience in Singapore how IBM has taken Watson out of its “Jeopardy!” TV show playground and put Watson to work!

I last discussed Watson with Manoj this past April at the IBM Impact event, when Watson had just matriculated into the workforce, getting jobs in both the healthcare and financial services industries.

During our interview yesterday here at IBM InterConnect, Manoj and I conducted a mid-year performance review for Watson, and the evaluation was overwhelmingly positive — Watson will continue to stay gainfully employed, but as with any cutting edge technology, there are always areas for improvement.

We discussed all of this, and how Manoj’s team has made Watson smaller and smarter, during our interview here in Singapore. Manoj also explained how Watson has really become a demonstrable example of “one of the most dramatic shifts we’re going to see in our life times,” the shift from transactional to cognitive computing.

You can view the interview here.

Bank On The Run

The Washington Post reported earlier that three of the nation’s four largest banks are about to launch a system called “ClearXchange” that will let customers transfer money from their checking accounts using only a mobile number or email address.

The three banks include Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Wells Fargo & Co., and they expect to add other financial institutions later as they work to build an industry-wide utility for moving money around.

I’ve been with an Internet-only bank since 1996, so for my money, this is long overdue.  Of course, it does beg the question as to how this squares with a service like PayPal.

PayPal being, of course, the e-payments market leader, and which according to this post processed some $27.5 billion (U.S.) in payments in the first quarter.

But enough about money on the move…let’s get Rational for a brief spell.

I mentioned in a prior post that the IBM Innovate software  and systems innovation conference is transpiring in Orlando, Florida, June 5-9.  That’s just around the corner.

You can still register to attend here, and if you’re not sure if you want to make the trip yet or not, try out the sample agenda builder here, which might just tip the balance and send you on your way.

Our world class Rational social media team will be providing expanded coverage of the event this year.  You can follow some of the key social streams (including Twitter, YouTube, and live video coverage via LiveStream) on the IBM Innovate conversations site.‘

This year, folks can also submit questions for panelists directly from our social spaces for the Day 4 keynote expert panel discussion.

And of course, you won’t want to miss “The Guild’s” Felicia Day, who will be Innovate 2011’s special guest emcee.

In a recent interview with our Smarter Planet blog, Felicia provided a big reveal: Her brother worked for IBM and has been to Innovate numerous times!

Banking On IBM Industry Expertise

IBM has been relentlessly focused in recent weeks on the opportunity the smarter planet initiative presents to assist businesses in industry-specific contexts.

At Lotusphere in January, Lotus introduced its collaboration framework, which provided specific collaboration-oriented guidance across several industry-specific areas.

Last week in Las Vegas, IBM’s Mike Rhodin did the same for the integrated service management sector at IBM Pulse 2010.

Today, IBM announced that Whitney National Bank, with $12 billion in assets, has become a new banking customer and one that is utilizing IBM’s recently announced banking industry framework.

To compete in today’s dramatically altered financial playing field, banks must employ smarter banking strategies to achieve new levels of risk control, efficiency and customer service.

Whitney National Bank is using IBM technology across its regional banks to simplify its business practices, meet regulatory compliance and ensure transparency with customers.

Whitney can now extract key intelligence to obtain a full view of a customer’s transaction history — including a comprehensive analysis of sales trends and costs — to deliver more customized services and offerings. Increased visibility to this account data also empowers the bank’s customers to regulate their activities and expenses.

With industry consolidation, the number one priority of banks is to be able to assess liquidity.

After acquiring more than a dozen regional banks, Whitney National Bank faced the challenge of consolidating customer information and a host of disparate IT systems for checking and savings account management, online bill payment and loan processing.

Whitney National Bank is using IBM Cognos software to extract key intelligence to help it obtain a full view of its customer bases' behavior, including a comprehensive analysis of sales trends and costs, so it can deliver more customized services and offerings.

By integrating data from disparate IT systems, Whitney has been able to modernize its technology systems across regional branches to better manage risk and enhance customer service.

By using IBM’s Banking Industry Frameworks, Whitney National Bank is able to leverage pre-built industry-proven data and process models already employed by more than 250 financial institutions.

The bank is also migrating to IBM Power System with DB2 in its data centers in Allen, Texas and Prattville, Alabama.

Whitney National Bank is the latest example of how the right combination of hardware and software can be fine-tuned to meet the specific demands of banks.