When downloading an app to a smartphone, the user is often asked to turn on “location services” so the app can follow you. Now, banks are jumping on the “location” bandwagon to offer better fraud protection, frictionless travel, plus help customers avoid ATM fees, and doing so with the assistance of cell towers.
Bankrate reported that by sharing your location with your banking app, the bank can sync up where your phone is located versus the location of your credit card. When an unauthorized charge is made in a location different from the one you’re sharing, the bank can automatically detect it and decline the charge. According to Dominic Venturo, chief innovation officer at U.S. Bank, the app uses cell towers to record your general location. The bank might know you’re in the city of Chicago, but not the exact street. “It’s not a [record] of all the places you’ve been. It is where you are relative to cell towers,” Venturo says.
The location tracking services also come in handy for world travelers. Heading to Europe for 10 days? Instead of contacting your bank prior to jumping on a plane, you can activate the location services within your banking app to verify your location. To make the experience seamless, Venturo says that it works best when you share your location always, rather than just when you’re using the app.
And how can enabling your location help you to save money? To avoid those pesky out-of-network ATM fees, which on average cost $4.69, according to Bankrate’s 2017 checking account survey, allow your bank have access to your location, even momentarily, to locate the nearest bank-approved ATM.
Similarly, Bank of America uses geo-location to give discounts or cash back at various retailers through its BankAmeriDeals program. The Bank of America app can help you find deals nearby when the location services are enabled, says Brent Reston, head of digital sales at B of A. The program has helped customers save more than $100 million since its launch in 2012, Reston says.
But what about privacy and security concerns? Let’s face it, our bank has lots of data on us, including where we spend our money. And since banks are highly regulated, they likely won’t do anything nefarious with your location data.
According to Bruce Schneier, a fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, “Banks are pretty trustworthy on the scheme of things. Next to Uber, they are Gods.”
November 22, 2017
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