Bank of America to Jump on the Groupon Bandwagon in Second Attempt to ‘Sell Webkinz’
Bank of America, it seems, will begin testing a Groupon-like deals program, apparently called BankAmeriDeals, Reuters is reporting.
The second-largest bank on Wednesday will start testing a new service that will allow customers to rack up savings from retailers based on their previous spending patterns.
Customers will receive offers through the bank’s online banking website. The discounts will be awarded in the form of cash payments once a month. Customers need not sign up for emailed coupons or check a separate web site, as bargain hunters do with offerings from Groupon Inc and others.
Bank of America is private-labeling a Cardlytics service.
Apparently, Bank of America will begin testing the service this week with its own employees in North Carolina, South Carolina and Nevada. It will roll out the program to the rest of its workforce in February. Bank of America has been testing a mobile wallet on its employees for the last several months, too.
What’s interesting about this is not that Bank of America is trying to be Groupon — which is somewhat shocking, when you think about it. Rather, it is that Bank of America has tried online retailing before, and failed. In 2008, Bank of America launched the Bank of America Mall. The Mall had partnerships with Target, Toys ‘R Us and Kmart, among other retailers, to sell stuff to Bank of America consumers. No joy, unfortunately.
So why does Bank of America think it can sell stuff to consumers now? Uh, I have no idea. However, if it works, there won’t be a bank in, well, America that won’t offer deals of at least some sort as a means of making up for lost debit card revenue.
What is impressive — at least for a, FI of Bank of America’s size — is how quickly it pulled this together. BofA filed for a trademark for “BankAmeriDeals” last July, and in August purchased www.bankamerideals.com. (The site is still not live, as of Jan. 24, 2012.) By Jan. 17, 2012, Bank of America was in the final stages of the trademarking process. And now the bank will apparently go live with the service next week. That’s relatively quick work.
One final point. It is not clear that BofA will even use www.bankamerideals.com. The registrar for the site is MarkMonitor, which is a trademark enforcement outfit, not BAC itself.
