Currently, the banking industry mails account statements to customers in paper form. An account statement may inform an account holder of transactions, such as purchases, debits, and credits, made using their account over a billing cycle. Advertisements may be included in an envelope that contains the account statement, but the included advertisements are not individually tailored to interests of any particular account holder. Rather, advertisements are generalized for account holders as a group. Large subsets of account holders in the group may receive advertisements that are of no interest. Even if some are interested in an advertisement, the account holder must take additional steps to act on the advertised offer, such as making a phone call, going to a store, etc. Interested account holders often may forget to act on their interest because of these extra steps. Moreover, mailing paper statements have environmental and economical costs.
Some banks send account statements in virtual paper form, e.g., as a static PDF file built from a template that, except for individual account information, provides the same advertising and solicitations to each customer receiving a PDF statement as every other customer. These virtual paper statements thus have many of the same drawbacks and limitations of paper statements.
In light of the foregoing background, the following presents a simplified summary of the present disclosure in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the disclosure. This summary is not an extensive overview. It is not intended to identify key or critical elements or to delineate scope. The following summary merely presents some concepts in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description provided below.
Aspects of the disclosure address one or more of the issues mentioned above by disclosing methods, computer readable media, and apparatuses for providing a dynamically generated interactive account statement.
With aspects of the disclosure, computer readable media, apparatuses, and methods may include analyzing account information for an account with a financial institution, where the account is associated with a first customer of the financial institution, and wherein the account information comprises a plurality of purchases made by the first customer using the account, selecting a subset of marketing offers from a plurality of available marketing offers, based on the plurality of purchases, generating an interactive account statement for the customer, said account statement comprising the account information and the subset of marketing offers, wherein each marketing offer in the subset of marketing offers is hyperlinked in the interactive account statement to additional information corresponding to that offer, and sending the interactive account statement to a client device associated with the customer.
With other aspects of the disclosure, systems and methods may include receiving an interactive account statement message comprising an interactive account statement at a client device; prompting, by the client device, a user to input authentication information in response to the user instructing the client device to open the interactive account statement, communicating an authentication request comprising the authentication information to a computer server, receiving an authentication confirmation from the computer server, and presenting the interactive account statement to the user.
Aspects of the disclosure may be provided in one or more computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions that, when executed, cause one or more processors to perform one or more of the process steps described herein. In some embodiments, aspects of the example embodiments may be implemented on a computer-readable medium, for example, by storing computer-executable instructions or modules, or by utilizing computer-readable data structures. Of course, the methods and systems of the embodiments may also include other additional elements, steps, computer-executable instructions, or computer-readable data structures. For example, one skilled in the art will recognize that the various modules described herein may be implemented using programming code (e.g., C++, C, Java, etc.) and be associated with a processor on a computing device that may execute the module.
The present disclosure is illustrated by way of example and is not limited in the accompanying figures in which like reference numerals indicate similar elements and in which:
The DGAI statement 200 may also permit a user to conduct transactions. A user may fill in information in the DGAI statement 200 to cause the client device 141 to interact with the computer server 101 to perform a desired transaction, as described in further detail below. The DGAI statement 200 may include links, such as, for example, hyperlinks for user selection containing a uniform resource locator (URL) instructing the client device 141 to request a webpage to obtain additional information on a desired transaction or to sign up for a desired transaction. Paper suppressed customers may thus be able to take advantage of marketing offers similar to paper-based statements, which can include inserts, bangtails and balance transfer offers. The below example embodiments describe a financial institution providing the DGAI statement 200, but entities other than a financial institution may provide a DGAI statement 200.
Referring to
Input/Output (I/O) 109 may include a microphone, keypad, touch screen, and/or stylus through which a user of server 101 may provide input, and may also include one or more of a speaker for providing audio output and a video display device for providing textual, audiovisual and/or graphical output. Software may be stored within memory 115 and/or storage to provide instructions to processor 103 for performing various functions. For example, memory 115 may store software such as an operating system 117, application programs 119, and an associated database 121.
The network connections depicted in
The operations of computer devices and systems shown in
Initially, a user of the client device 141 may enroll to periodically receive the DGAI statement 200 instead of, or in addition to, a paper statement. For example, the user may use the client device 141 to access a webpage of the server 101 to open an account with a financial institution and sign up to receive the DGAI statement 200. When signing up, the user may select identifier information, such as, but not limited to, a username and password, to uniquely identify the user. The identifier information may also include an image, such as used during SITEKEY™ authentication provided by BANK OF AMERICA™ Corporation of Charlotte, N.C. Techniques other than SITEKEY™ may also be used for user authentication.
Once enrolled, the computer server 101 may communicate an enrollment message to the client device 141 to determine whether the client device 141 can properly open the DGAI statement 200. The client device 141 may include acceptance information in the format of the DGAI statement 200 to ensure that the client device 141 can properly receive and display the DGAI statement 200. The user may input information from the acceptance information to the client device 141 for communication to the computer server 101, thereby verifying that the client device 141 can properly display the DGAI statement 200. For example, the acceptance information may be an image depicting a sequence of letters and/or numbers.
Prior to generating the DGAI statement 200, the computer server 101 may retrieve purchase history information for a user account and may identify available marketing offers for inclusion in the DGAI statement 200 based on the purchase history. The purchase history information may be transactions, payments, or other activity on the user account in a predetermined amount of time (e.g., preceding month).
The computer server 101 may identify marketing offers based on recent purchases using the account, demographic information, advertiser requirements, or any combination thereof. In an example embodiment, the financial institution may sell advertising space within the DGAI statement 200 to advertisers. The computer server 101 may host a webpage where advertisers may input advertisements to include in the DGAI statement 200. The computer server 101 may store an expiration date associated with each marketing offer and may remove any stored offers that have expired.
The computer server 101 may analyze recent purchases made using the user account to identify advertisements for products related to the recent purchases. For example, the computer server 101 may identify a recent purchase of an airline ticket and include an advertisement related to new luggage in the DGAI statement 200 or advertisements for merchants at the flight destination. In another example, the computer server 101 may analyze recent purchases to determine that the user is shopping at a first store or purchasing services from a first provider, and may include offers for a competitor's store, service, or product in the DGAI statement 200. The computer server 101 may also identify any cross-offers from the financial institution to include in the DGAI statement 200.
The server 101 may statistically analyze the purchases to identify trends. For instance, the server 101 may process a user's purchase history to identify that the user purchases a product at semi-regular periodic intervals (e.g., renews a magazine subscription every year, shops at a greenhouse every march, etc.). The server 101 may provide advertisers with access to information to permit them to purchase advertisements when a current time precedes a next instance of the semi-regular periodic interval. For instance, a user may purchase a product once every June and December, so an advertiser of a competitive product may purchase advertising space included in a DGAI statement 200 sent out in May and November.
The server 101 may apply a weighting function to the purchase history to give greater consideration to certain purchases. The weighting function may, for example, weight newer purchases higher than older purchases if a user is likely to be a repeat customer, and may weight purchases based on time of year (e.g., more likely to purchase snow removal equipment in the winter, flowers in the spring, etc.). In one example, the server 101 may applying a weighting function that ignores all purchases made after a threshold amount of time in the past are unlikely to be repeated (e.g., purchase at a store 1 year ago unlikely to be repeated). Also, the server 101 may analyze the purchase history information to identify regular customers of a first provider who have switched to a competitor, to permit the first provider to include an offer or other incentive to remain a customer.
The computer server 101 may identify any advertiser requirements when selecting offers to include in the DGAI statement 200. Advertiser requirements can include paying a premium for certain types of customers (e.g., customers that recently purchased a certain product or service, a competitor's product or service, within a certain demographic, etc.). The computer server 101 may then generate a DGAI statement 200 including one or more marketing offers for communication to the client device 141.
The client device 141 may receive and present the DGAI message 302 in an interface to inform the user that the DGAI statement 200 is available, as shown in
During authentication, the computer server 101 may determine whether the user has previously accessed a DGAI statement 200 using a particular client device 141. For example, the server 101 may assign a unique identifier to each client device 141 associated with a particular user name. If the user has previously accessed the DGAI statement 200 using a particular client device 141, the server 101 may not further prompt the user to answer one or more challenges questions (e.g., mother's maiden name, etc.). If the client device 141 is unrecognized, the server 101 may communicate an identity confirmation webpage, as shown in
When the challenge question is answered correctly or if the unique identifier is recognized, the computer server 101 may cause the client device 141 to display the user's SiteKey image, such as SITEKEY™ by BANK OF AMERICA™. The SiteKey image may be a picture selected by the user when signing up for an account associated with the DGAI statement 200. If the user determines that the SiteKey image is correct, the user may input their password. The client device 141 may communicate an authentication request 304 that includes the password to the server 101 (see also
Upon successful user authentication, the server 101 may establish an authenticated session 308 with the client device 141 to permit the user to conduct transactions using the DGAI statement 200. Because the user already has been authenticated when accessing the DGAI statement 200, the server 101 might not require further user authentication to conduct the transactions until a user ends the authenticated session. For example, the client device 141 may use the authentication key, provided to decrypt the DGAI statement 200, to encrypt messages sent to the server 101. The client device 141 may encrypt information that is to be communicated to the server 101 using the authentication key to generate a transaction request 310. In other examples, the client device 141 may communicate authentication information in a transaction request 310 instead of or in addition to encrypting with an authentication key. Example transactions that may be requested include bill payment, balance transfers, and enrolling in marketing offers, as further described below. The DGAI statement 200 may include links associated with each transaction permitting the client device 141 to request additional information or to sign up for offers. The server 101 may decrypt and process the transaction request 310, and may encrypt a transaction response 312 using the authentication key that is communicated to the client device 141. The transaction response 312 may identify whether the server 101 executed the transaction or may indicate that the server 101 was unable to execute the transaction. Examples of conducting transactions using the DGAI statement 200 are provided below.
Referring again to
The DGAI statement 200 may include multiple transaction fields 202, 204, 208, 210, and 212 permitting the user to request transactions be performed using their account or to sign up for an offer. In an example, transaction field 202 may provide bill payment for their account, transaction fields 204, 208, and 212 may permit the user to sign up for offers provided by the financial institution or other entity, and transaction field 210 may permit the user to access rewards for using their account. Each of the fields may be associated with a link to request a webpage to obtain additional information or to sign up for the offer. A link may be a hyperlink or other information to establish a connection with an information provider, such as the server 101 or other entity.
To pay a bill, the user may input information into the transaction field 202. In this example, the DGAI statement 200 may be a credit card statement that permits a user to pay some or all of a credit card balance. The transaction field 202 may permit the user to select a ‘Pay From’ account using a drop down menu to select an account to debit (e.g., checking account, savings account, money market account, etc.), a payment amount (e.g., minimum due, new balance, etc.), and a “payment date” to select the date on which payment is applied. Upon entering the desired information, the user may select the select a “schedule payment” icon in the transaction field 202.
In response, the client device 141 may encrypt the user entered payment information (i.e., amount, payment date, etc.) with the authentication key to generate a transaction request 310 (see also
Referring again to
For instance, the user may select the field 208 containing the offer for a competing service. When creating the DGAI statement 200, the server 101 may process payments made during the previous billing cycle (e.g., month) to determine that the user pays for satellite television service each month using their account. A competitor may purchase advertisement space within the DGAI statement 200 whenever the server 101 identifies that a customer has made purchase for a particular service (e.g., satellite television) from a competing provider. The server 101 may include the field 208 in the DGAI statement 200 to provide an offer from the advertiser for user selection.
Once selected, the client device 141 may request a webpage corresponding to the selected offer from the server 101 and present the webpage to the user. For instance, the field 208 may be associated with a uniform resource locator (URL) of a website to request upon user selection. The field 208 may also direct the client device 141 to a third party server, instead of server 101, that provides the webpage. The user may input information into the webpage to sign up for the offer.
The field 208 also may be associated with an expiration date for the offer. If the expired, the client device 141 may provide access to a webpage indicating that the offer is no longer available and may direct the user to one or more other offers that may be of interest to the user.
Referring to
When a user selects to make a balance transfer by selecting “Make Transfer” 214 in
When a user has completed all desired transactions, the user may sign off to terminate the authenticated session 308 (see also
The disclosure is operational with numerous other general purpose or special purpose computing system environments or configurations. Examples of well known computing systems, environments, and/or configurations that may be suitable for use with the disclosure include, but are not limited to, personal computers, server computers, hand-held or laptop devices, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based systems, set top boxes, programmable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and distributed computing environments that include any of the above systems or devices, and the like.
The disclosure may be described in the general context of computer-executable instructions, such as program modules, being executed by a computer. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, objects, components, data structures, etc. that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. The disclosure may also be practiced in distributed computing environments where tasks are performed by remote processing devices that are linked through a communications network. In a distributed computing environment, program modules may be located in both local and remote computer storage media including memory storage devices. The computer-executable instructions may be stored on a computer readable media, such as, but not limited to, a hard disk, a floppy disk, a flash drive, or other tangible computer readable media and memories.
Aspects of the present disclosure have been described in terms of illustrative embodiments thereof. Numerous other embodiments, modifications and variations within the scope and spirit of the appended claims will occur to persons of ordinary skill in the art from a review of this disclosure. For example, one of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the steps illustrated in the illustrative figures may be performed in other than the recited order, and that one or more steps illustrated may be optional.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/255,727, filed Oct. 28, 2009, the contents of which are expressly incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Number | Date | Country | |
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61255727 | Oct 2009 | US |