NEW YORK — Transforming the paper checkbook for customers of smaller banks is what T8 Webware hopes to accomplish with its new mobile app that debuted at last week’s FinovateFall.

Dubbed Grip, the app, which banks will distribute, aggregates consumers’ balances and transactions from an unlimited number of FI sources. The objective of the technology is to help consumers gain a deeper — and more current — understanding of their daily finances to settle their “should I or shouldn’t I swipe my debit card” fears. 

Bank Innovation sat down with Wade Arnold, chief executive of T8, last week to see the app in action, and we were encouraged by what we saw. The goal of the new app is nothing short of letting consumers get a better “grip” on their finances, whose idea was conceptualized as a result of the recession and the ensuing whiplash of extra-budget-cautious consumers. One feature of Grip, for example, can alert consumers to when their bills are due, while another feature offers a more expansive view of a consumer’s available cash than what most banks offer consumers today. How? For one, consumers can “share” their accounts with others, such as a spouse or small business employee, as well as take photos of their receipts as a way to “post” transactions before they would typically appear.

Certainly, the need for creating such services is acute and even banks are beginning to acknowledge the benefits of offering more robust PFM technology. (See earlier coverage here.) But, some banks harbor reservations about such technology cutting into their overdraft fee revenue — a view that Arnold believes needs to be overhauled.

Arnold, for one, says the mobile channel can better brand the banks to create revenue. He says Grip will give regional banks better data to help them understand their portfolios, not a historic strength for such institutions. That is why Arnold says he is pushing “customer insights” as his next major offering from Grip, which will rely on the data collected from the app to help regional banks better target their customers. Banks, for example, can already view a dashboard that aggregates customer usage patterns, such as frequency of use and share of wallet, so FIs can see where they stand with their customers and glean insight into where they should build future branches and/or ATMs, for example. Arnold made it a point to tell us that Grip will not share customer financial information.

Grip’s distribution sweet spot is smaller financial institutions and credit unions that have yet to make a move in mobile services, a market that Arnold believes is largely untapped to date. Arnold tells Bank Innovation that the technology for FIs can be up and running as quickly as three weeks. Grip costs financial institutions $0.99 cents per each active user. An active user is defined as one who has launched the app during the month.