If you follow Strivve you know that COVID-19 is top of mind for us right now ; we are taking the necessary steps ourselves to remain healthy and safe.  Strive isn’t a large company, but even we have felt the strain of having to shift processes that were built with the assumption of bodies in chairs and rework them to be able to be done (and done well) remotely.  It sounds easy – especially when we have always supported individuals working remotely. It is a different thing altogether when the whole team is necessarily disparately located with no in-person contact at all.

So imagine, then, what large organizations who must mobilize workforce conversions in real time from in-person to remote operations must face.  HSBC, an international investment bank, for example,  employs a quarter-million people. Does your organization depend on face to face contact?  Add another layer of risk, challenge, frustration, complexity, and ultimately cost. Thankfully HSBC is well-positioned to be able to push most transacting online, but if you are part of an industry that hasn’t transformed to digital processing (and fulfillment, if possible) you are in trouble.

What, then, can we do to be able to empower consumers to shift their purchasing online?  Instead of going to the grocery store, for example, many of us live in areas where large markets are being closed, and people are leery of congregating in areas with more than 10 or 20 people.  Demand for online services selling physical goods is skyrocketing in the shadow of COVID-19.

For financial institutions, this challenge is important.  The landscape of credit and debit card products is vast with rewards, rates, and fees being the biggest differentiating factors for consumers.  These vary from product to product, but few truly entice cardholder loyalty. Yet, we know that loyal consumers are the most valuable. On the card issuer side, they know that acquiring new customers is expensive.   It is also the case that in the US, 40% of revenue comes from returning or repeat purchasers.  This 40% of revenue is created by only 8% of all visitors.  Repeat purchasers account for even more revenue during the holiday season and times of slow economic growth, such as what is expected and is rapidly becoming reality with COVID-19.  In an economic climate that will have financial institutions already experiencing less transaction volume (which translates to less interchange revenue and less interest income), the risk associated with losing the 8% of your cardholders that generate 40% of your revenue is immense.  Financial institutions, then, are looking for ways to ensure they can enable their cardholders in their journey to an ever increasing amount of online transacting.

The likely response to the extreme uncertainty associated with the COVID-19 pandemic will be to attempt to conservatively manage what is in our control.  There is a high probability that capital projects will be put on hold and a focus on revenue generation will necessarily emerge.  Both entirely new products and services will be considered, but also new ways of transacting will be evaluated for existing physical products and services.  The largest U.S. banks have already halted repurchasing stocks to put their capital to use helping consumers and businesses. Security will become an even larger focus than it is today as even bad actors will feel the sting of an economic downturn and become more desperate.  At Strivve we’ve already heard rumblings of IT lockdown scenarios where changes are being monitored with scrutiny if not being outright disallowed.

At Strivve, we create products that inspire cardholder loyalty.  Strivve CardUpdatr is a fully white labelled turnkey application that enables your cardholders to place their new card credentials on file at all of the sites they depend on.  Users provide credentials – both card and site related – and the Strivve technology securely and efficiently does the rest. No more expired cards, service interruptions, and delayed Uber rides at inopportune times.  The best part about CardUpdatr in the context of the current uncertainty is that it is a standalone service and does not require integration back to the card issuer/FI. Strive customers brand and style the web application, and then market it to their cardholders in a number of ways – everything from piggybacking existing marketing methods with additional calls to action to dedicated programs targeted to get more cards on file at more sites, and everything in between.  New Strivve CardUpdatr customers launch with ease within weeks from concept to production use and realize value immediately.

If you too are challenged by seeking out new revenue streams at a time where organizational change is being minimized or outright denied we’d like to hear from you.  CardUpdatr is a zero-touch (no development or integration) service offering built upon our flexible CardSavr API platform.  Cardholders will get your card products at Top of Wallet™ at more merchant sites with ease while building loyalty along the way.