EXCLUSIVE— As recent hacks such as Equifax demonstrate, credit providers have work to do to gain back consumer trust, and doing so is going to require fixing the customer experience as well as data security.
Providers should work to provide a more customer-centric experience, according to Aaron Frank, co-founder and CEO of credit startup Final — which takes the view that credit was broken anyway, even before the Equifax hack. Protecting users from fraud is all well and good, according to Frank, but it’s equally important to maintain a good experience for your customers even during fraud attacks.
Final is displaying its own customer-centric approach by reimbursing those Final users who have frozen their accounts after the Equifax breach last month —which impacted the data of about 143 million consumers — a service that is free to its customers.
“The question is, for that good customer, how do you do something that’s customer-centric?” Frank told Bank Innovation, noting that he and his co-founder created Final after having a “terrible experience with our banks” in 2014 after an influx of credit card fraud.
Final was created to provide both a better experience and better security: rather than providing its users with one credit card, which can be lost or stolen (an apparently alarming amount), it provides users with the ability to create an unlimited number of virtual credit cards.
These cards can then be set to pay for specific services, so users know exaclt which card is used at which merchant, and when. A Final customer could create one virtual credit card for the automatic payment of their Netflix account, for instance — and if that virtual card is hacked, there’s no risk to the user’s other bills, expenses, or financial data, because that card exists solely for one payment and purpose. Final built out its own technology for the purpose, which gives the company another edge over traditional cards, according to Frank.
The hands-on approach to technology also means Final is “constantly doing product development,” according to Frank, which could mean the addition of other features (like small business credit cards, for instance) in 2018.
“There is definitely a value added [to the customer] when you build out the platform yourself,” Frank said.