‘Tis the season for spending.
And in an age where the connected economy is rapidly taking shape, where data helps firms anticipate what you might need — before you might be thinking of what you need next — the offers come fast and furious into shoppers’ email inboxes.
In some cases, banks are getting directly into retail promotions, blurring the lines of commerce a bit. And super-apps are forming, too, with promos in the mix … and the common thread is the browser extension.
You’re no stranger, we’d guess, to the to the fact that offers and promotions — based on your browsing history, of course — show up on your Facebook feed, or on your Amazon page. The transactions you’ve made, wielding debit and credit cards, give retailers an idea of what might keep you spending.
The banks, of course, have that spending data in hand, and predictive analytics, tied with browsing history, might lead to a fruitful relationship: The financial institution (FI) earns revenue from linking with the retailer for the promotion itself, and ultimately garners top line from the transaction itself.
The banks, of course, have been at it for a while, where many of the marquee names such as Chase and Wells Fargo have offered rewards programs by linking up with the FIs to operate as an advertising platform within banks’ digital channels.
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Blurring Some Lines
But the blurring gets a bit, well, blurrier, when browsers are introduced into the mix, and where banks might focus less on buying, which is backward-looking spending data, after all, and more on browsing, which we contend spotlights “current” consumer intent.
To that end, a bit anecdotally, Capital One, through Capital One Shopping, offers a free web browsing tool that helps consumers find deals across thousands of retailers. The “push” into browsing, as it were, is not necessarily novel. We’ve seen PayPal do something similar, where a few years ago it bought Honey. As detailed in this space, Honey recently rolled out a new iOS Safari browser extension for mobile users in the U.S.
Read here: PayPal’s Honey Begins Offering Cash Back
PayPal, of course, has been busy building out its super-app, where the coupons and personalization are part of the shopping experience itself inside the app.
Read more: PayPal’s New Super-App Positioned to Deliver Next-Level Connected Experience
And earlier this month, buy now, pay later (BNPL) platform Klarna announced a browser extension that will allow customers to use the company’s flexible payment options on their desktop computers at all online stores, even those that aren’t Klarna partners.
The aforementioned browser extensions represent an extension, too, of the connected economy. When banks like Capital One move into direct retail offers based on browsing, when super-apps fold in offers to build out ecosystems, the end goal is to “better” anticipate what the consumer might need at any given point in time, to help nudge certain payment methods to toward top-of-mind status, while bringing a slew of retailers toward top of mind, as well across all manner of mobile channels.
Read also: Klarna Debuts Browser Extension for Online Stores
