Independent Banker - May 2021 - 69

managing a jumbled web of recurring
fees is a problem that community
banks are uniquely positioned to
solve. Or at least that's the belief of
WalletFi, a four-year-old subscription
management fintech in Raleigh, N.C.,
and of $1.8 billion-asset BankFirst in
Columbus, Miss.
Marc Miller, CEO of WalletFi, says
his business was born of " a personal
pain " of reapplying for subscriptions
and services after a few of his bank
cards were lost, stolen or had expired.
" We're hearing more and more about
the subscription economy, especially
post-COVID, " he says. " The way that
we consume services has shifted
permanently to a subscription-based,
recurring payment model. "
Miller points out that the average
American has " something like 13
recurring payments, which is a
huge number. " Nowadays, he notes,
streaming services, Amazon Prime,
utilities, mobile services, life insurance
and even high-end purchases like
a Mercedes can be financed on a
subscription basis.
Customers can only effectively
manage a dizzying number of set-itand-forget-it
payments if they have a
way of knowing what payments they've
committed to, Miller says. WalletFi
simplifies this by untangling messy
payment data and separating out the
recurring payments. A community
bank like BankFirst can then make
customers' lives easier by listing all
recurring payments when someone
Name:
BankFirst
Location:
Columbus, Miss.
Assets:
$1.8 billion
2020, BankFirst's recurring debit card
payments for its 33,000-plus debit
card holders accounted for 10.4% of
total charges, with annual interchange
worth $219,799. Put another way, the
community bank's interchange income
grew 6.4% from 2019 until 2020
thanks to the WalletFi partnership,
which is now nearly two years old.
During this same time period, the
number of BankFirst's mobile wallet
transactions expanded threefold,
with a 2,500% increase in the
average mobile wallet transaction
ticket amount.
" Knowing what
customers had set up
on their old cards gave
us the ability to make
sure they didn't go into
arrears on a payment
or have a payment
declined. It also helped
the bank maintain
those ongoing,
recurring charges. "
-LEON MANNING, BANKFIRST
Recurring payment data can also
help community banks seize new
opportunities.
Over the past 18 months, BankFirst
made two acquisitions, gaining 3,500
new debit-card customers, Manning
says. WalletFi extracted three months
of payment data for these new
customers so that when BankFirst
mailed out welcome letters, it could
provide the names and contacts for all
recurring transactions that might then
be transferred to the new debit card.
" Knowing what customers had
set up on their old cards gave us the
ability to make sure they didn't go
into arrears on a payment or have a
payment declined, " Manning says. " It
also helped the bank maintain those
ongoing, recurring charges. "
gets a new debit card or wants to
take advantage of a promotion that
encourages debit card use.
Why recurring payment
data matters
When consumers put recurring
payments on a debit card, it's a
" goldmine " of interchange revenue for
banks, says Leon Manning, BankFirst's
director of marketing. He notes that
in an era of extremely low interest
rates, community banks are hungry for
this interchange.
From March 31, 2019, until April 1,
Bundling fintech benefits
When it comes to partnerships
between community banks and
fintechs, the sum is often greater than
the parts.
Manning has forged another fintech
partnership to help him deal with a
different recurring payment headache:
canceling unwanted subscriptions.
BankFirst partnered with Billshark,
a bill renegotiation service in
Hopkinton, Mass., backed by Mark
Cuban, star of Shark Tank and owner
of the Dallas Mavericks. Billshark
independentbanker.org Q 67
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Independent Banker - May 2021

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