BaZing’s Got My Back

Car trouble - couple looking under the hood

By Clay Crenshaw Having worked with financial institutions over the last few decades on their retail checking account strategies, I find myself so focused on things like fee income, analytics, and net interest margins that I forget how relevant and impactful our products can be.  If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to share a quick…

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Fuel Your Fee Income with BaZing

Customer getting ready to use BaZing Fuel on her smartphone

Imagine your customers or members going to the pump and getting cheaper gas every single month. Think they’d appreciate your financial institution making that happen for them?  Inspired by popular grocery store programs, StrategyCorps’ new BaZing Fuel program takes fuel rewards to a whole new level by letting financial institutions help consumers save money when…

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Is Your Financial Institution Feeling the Burn?

Building Exterior in sunlight

When the first so-called “challenger banks” like Simple and Moven appeared on the scene around 2010 they were heralded as “disruptors” that were going to put traditional banks and credit unions out of business. Why? The asserted logic was that they provided a better customer experience, were more customer-friendly in terms of pricing (i.e., no…

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The Amazon Prime Effect: What does this mean for banking?

This content originally appeared here: [ LINK ]   By Dave DeFazio Remember what life was like before two-day shipping? I sure don’t. Like many of you, I am addicted to Amazon Prime, and I am going to bet that if you haven’t shopped on Amazon today, you’ve probably shopped on Amazon at least once…

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Our Favorite Monthly Subscription? Our Community Bank!

Garrelts family photo (Amy, Elizabeth, Max, and Claire)

Members of the Garrelts family, which includes Chris (the unseen photographer), his wife, Amy, and their three teens (Elizabeth, Max, and Claire), saved $35 per ticket at Universal Studios Hollywood — plus another $1,200 in unforeseen cell phone repair costs, all thanks to their checking account powered by BaZing. By Chris Garrelts As a father…

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Growing Primary Checking Relationships

This content originally appeared here: [ LINK ] By Dave Crook Throughout my 30 years of working with banks and credit unions, bankers have focused on a singular two-word phrase: relationship banking. Even before the coronavirus, there was a passionate renewal of relationship banking’s importance, with a specific focus on primacy — primary versus non-primary…

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Reinventing the Checking Account

Is it “game over” for mid-size banks and credit unions when it comes to checking accounts? Are the threats from deposit displacement, P2P providers, Amazon, and megabanks insurmountable? No.  Despite the prevalence of free checking accounts, many consumers express interest in switching to that hypothetical Amazon-offered bundled checking account we discussed earlier in this report.…

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FI FOCUS: CS Bancshares, Inc.

State Bank customer service representatives Lisa Hobbs, Vicki Posch, Terra Allen, and Shelley Tate show off the bank’s new checking account features. For years, Chillicothe State Bank, State Bank of Missouri, and The State Bank have passed along a rich tradition of community banking, service, and values to residents of five cities in North-central Missouri. …

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It’s Time to Kill Free Checking

Why would consumers show more interest in a fee-based account from Amazon than a free account? One reason is surely the value-added services bundled in. But there’s another reason: Consumers have learned (the hard way) that a free checking account isn’t really free.  As one bank customer, commenting online, put it:  “The issue isn’t wanting…

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The Threats to Checking Accounts

person using laptop computer

Over the first half of the 2010s, the number of checks written in the United States declined from 41.9 billion to 17.1 billion — a nearly 60% drop. Bad news for checking accounts, right? Wrong.  According to the FDIC, the percentage of U.S. households without a checking account dropped from 8.2% in 2011 to 7% in…

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