SAN FRANCISCO – Though Americans continue to embrace and adapt digital banking services, they still require incentives to spur them to use a direct bank.

“People need a better reason to go direct,” said Jeff Stephens, founder of Tribed, during a panel at last week’s Bank Innovation 2012. “We need to give them more of an emotional reason.”

Tribed, for example, tries to provide consumers that reason by offering niche banking to communities online. The end goal of Tribed is nothing short of amplifying the relevance of financial services for consumers by uniting them by their passions, such dog lovers for whom Tribed launched Wag Bank.

All types of consumers need an emotional tie to their financial institutions.

“Our demographic doesn’t want anything different than anyone else,” said Shawn Budde, co-founder and chief risk officer at ZestCash, a payday loan provider. “Everybody wants to be treated with respect and dignity, regardless of segment.”

But to get consumers to actually feel something about their banks is no small order.

“I don’t think there’s much enthusiasm for banks,” Stephens said. “The customer is apathetic. …We get so used to similar products that are equally available.”

To date, Stephens said consumers give the purchase of banking products as much consideration as they’d give toilet paper shopping, which highlights a paradox that needs to be solved within the industry: though Americans seemingly care about money, they could care less about their banks.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Stephens told attendees.

To make Americans care, industry players argue that FIs must remove “pain” from the banking customer experience.

“Banking is a utility and if it aspires to be something else, it’s probably delusional,” Budde said. “To get rid of apathy, you must give people a reason to care.”

Noah Breslow, chief operating officer at On Deck Capital, pointed out that eliciting customer emotions depends on their transaction levels. For many transactions, quick and easy is the best approach and emotion matters less.

“All low-end transactions will move to mobile,” Breslow said.