BillShrink Announces Four New Innovations for In-Statement Rewards

SAN FRANCISCO, May 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, BillShrink (www.BillShrink.com), the popular money-saving search engine and provider of in-statement rewards, announces from the FinovateSpring 2011 Conference a number of in-statement rewards innovations that manage customer loyalty across multiple merchants, highlight the next level of savings opportunities and turn the bank card into a unified loyalty card.

The award-winning StatementRewards technology is being integrated into the country's leading financial institutions, giving bank cardholders access to customized merchant deals and personalized bill analysis within their online bank statements and now on their mobile devices.

Perfectly complementing the online and mobile banking experience, StatementRewards delivers an easy purchase and redemption process for the most relevant and personalized deals.  The new features announced today are:

• Reward Discovery. Shows users how to achieve greater savings by accessing rewards that are within their reach.  Consumers are encouraged to use their StatementRewards-enabled accounts to unlock benefits that they are not currently eligible for, but could achieve with specific purchase behaviors in the future.

• Unified Loyalty Card. No need to carry punch cards, rewards cards or coupons in your wallet. This new enhancement integrates a user's loyalty across all merchants so bank customers can use one StatementRewards-enabled card everywhere to maximize their rewards.  The credit or debit card then becomes a multi-merchant loyalty card that manages all loyalty benefits while helping users achieve and chart progress towards Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum status levels at each merchant.

• Geo-Enhanced Rewards. Using geo-location, the platform generates rewards that are even more attractive than those they receive in-statement. The user may qualify for these mobile rewards purely due to their location or purely from their transaction history.  With geo-location tools, rewards are further sweetened, e.g. deeper discounts, due to the user's physical proximity to stores, enabling them to benefit from additional savings beyond those received on their online bank-statements. Users near their favorite stores can choose to be notified of current deals. The service further allows users to instantly view, purchase and redeem rewards directly from the smart phone.

• Social Ambassadors. With the delivery of unrivaled money-saving deals and social tools, banks and merchants are positioned to leverage customer goodwill and encourage customers to be brand ambassadors by posting to their social networks how much their bank saved them, updates on their newly purchased merchant rewards or to brag about their status with their favorite merchants. In turn, banks and merchants can further enhance rewards for customers posting to their social networks.

"The StatementRewards service allows banks to be an even more trusted advisor to their customers by helping them save money and get rewarded for their loyalty," said Schwark Satyavolu, co-founder and CEO of BillShrink. "Our newest in-statement innovations help bank customers discover great money-saving deals and manage all their merchant loyalty benefits in one place. We are making the bank card an even more valuable and indispensible product in people's lives."

StatementRewards, which was launched last October, transformed bank statements into a free interactive tool to help people save money and be rewarded for their loyalty. Merchant deals and discounts are based on transaction history and individuals are presented deals for products and services they already like. The application is powered by BillShrink's proprietary matching technology that analyzes non-personally identifiable spending patterns.

In addition to delivering relevant merchant deals, StatementRewards is the only offering in the market to include integrated advice to help consumers lower their monthly bills. Users can save more than $1000 a year with StatementRewards' bill analysis on large, recurring household expenses like TV service, gas and wireless plans.

Incurring no upfront costs, banks are seamlessly incorporating StatementRewards into the statement environment with lightweight technology integration, the simplest of which is a single line of Javascript. StatementRewards is being integrated into banks' online and mobile banking platforms and is currently being rolled out to more than 7 million banking customers across the U.S.

Images of the StatementRewards service and the mobile application experience can be found at http://www.billshrink.com/blog/press-kit/.

About BillShrink

Since BillShrink's launch in 2008, the company has helped 1.6 million Americans save more than $1 billion by delivering personalized money-saving recommendations on their most common household bills. In an era when eight out of 10 people overpay on their everyday bills, BillShrink sorts through millions of products and services – a billion cable and satellite packages, 10 million cell phone plan combinations, and 150,000 gas stations – to provide unbiased recommendations so users can get exactly what they need at the best price.

With the launch of StatementRewards, BillShrink brings the power and breadth of its money-saving platform directly to customers within their online bank statements. BillShrink is working with the country's leading financial institutions and merchants so that consumers can now receive and customize money-saving deals from their favorite merchants and service providers directly in their online bank sessions or electronic statements.

BillShrink was listed among the "Top 20 Best Money Websites" by Money Magazine and named one of the "Best Web Sites" by Kiplinger's. The company has been featured in the country's leading news sources including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, American Banker, Consumer Reports, Fortune, The Dr. Oz Show, The Today Show, CNN, ABC and CBS. BillShrink is headquartered in Redwood City, California. For more information, please visit http://corp.billshrink.com/.  

SOURCE BillShrink