The banking service Moven is expanding its marketing efforts as 2015 comes a close.
The startup has launched an e-gifting service for the holidays, as well as an affiliate program for media ventures, and has indicated there is more to come in this vein.
An email sent to customers last week urged them to “send Moven as a gift” this holiday season:
Give more than a gift card this holiday season. Give the gift of financial wellness.
Now you can send money, loaded on a Moven card, as a gift to anyone via email, text or Facebook. It’s better than a gift card because it’s free and your friend can:
- Track their spending.
- Check their Moven account balance from within the app.
Enjoy exclusive pricing from brands including Blue Apron, Cups, Jukely and more…
In an interesting spin on the ever-more-popular trend of sending gift cards in lieu of presents, recipients receive a Moven card loaded with anything from $20 to $500. This is a full-fledged account, as long as recipients pass KYC, but this is made easier by the “social referral” from an existing member, according to Moven president Alex Sion. This is an innovative way to give the gift of a full-featured transaction account.
A few weeks prior, Moven also initiated an affiliate program to reward customers for bringing in new customers.
The program is new, described as “quite young” by a representative of the New York-based company, and offers a flat fee of $8 for each conversion, with a potential for performance based bonuses as the program progresses. Materials distributed by Moven highlight the company’s mission, emphasizing financial wellness:
Moven is a mission-driven company whose sole purpose is to improve the financial health of its customers. We partner with organizations who are looking to offer their members tools to improve their financial wellness.
The company says its product can help students with loan repayment, shoppers planning for a large purchase, young professional stretching paychecks, and any individuals “who aren’t having their needs met by a retail bank.” (Bank Innovation was invited to participate in the affiliate program.)
This news comes at the same time Moven is enabling transactions without requiring password validation. The device identification will instead suffice, according to American Banker. This makes sense both in a world where banks perceive themselves as competing with non-financial apps on a user experience level, and also in the world of wearables and the Internet of Things, where password login is impractical. In total, 80% of Moven’s transactions are apparently low-risk enough that device ID is secure enough. The feature is rolling out first to Android, and to iOS in early 2016.
The password-free transactions and the ability to send gift accounts are both strong examples of a company doing everything to ease the friction of onboarding and using a transaction account, while remaining mindful of regulatory boundaries. And more moves like this should be expected. In other words, don’t be surprised to find a Moven card underneath the Christmas tree this year.