BillShrink Debuts StatementRewards(SM) Platform for Financial Institutions

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Oct. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- BillShrink (www.billshrink.com), the creator of the popular money-saving search engine, today announces the launch of StatementRewards, an extension of BillShrink's powerful platform that can be incorporated directly into the online bank statements of more than 200 million U.S. bank accounts and cardholders. StatementRewards enables banks to drive customer profitability by growing spend and enhance loyalty by offering substantial savings on their customers' most common expenses.

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Through StatementRewards, financial institutions have an unprecedented ability to deliver in-statement, money-saving recommendations and loyalty merchant rewards to their customers. Bank statements have advanced from static summaries to an interactive tool that highlights areas where the consumer can save – such as wireless bills or television service, two of the largest recurring monthly bills for most Americans – and will generate personalized recommendations based on an individual's usage or purchase behavior with merchants.

BillShrink's robust transaction identification engine classifies purchases into specific merchants and categories and then accurately determines what content to display. BillShrink's patent-pending matching technology leverages knowledge of both historical and current transactions to present consumers with the most relevant savings available.  

StatementRewards seamlessly incorporates BillShrink's ability to analyze and customize recommendations into the statement environment with lightweight technology integration, the simplest of which is a single line of Javascript. The platform offers participating banks a depth of controls, so that they can determine the type and number of rewards on a statement and can exclude some based on value, category, merchant, timeframe, and more. Banks control the look-and-feel of rewards and can also market in-house products, including cross-sell promotions.

BillShrink has 94% coverage of the top 100 U.S. merchants with a number of top-tier brands offering exclusive offers only available through StatementRewards. BillShrink's merchant relationships are rapidly growing and the company will make further partnership announcements in the near future.

"In our research, nearly 90% of consumers indicated they would switch their spending to cards or bank accounts that offer this functionality and 68% said they'd switch to a new card just to get a service like this," said Schwark Satyavolu, co-founder and CEO of BillShrink. "StatementRewards will give financial institutions a powerful way to increase spend and loyalty by providing customers with rewards and savings while they are considering their finances."

When viewing their statement, users can activate real-time, contextual rewards based on the personalized analysis of their monthly transactions. For example, people who frequent a national retailer, or a related store, are able to receive discounts. Or a transaction for a latte might trigger a $25 loyalty reward for the cost of $10 at the user's favorite coffee shop. Similarly, gas purchases generate cheaper gas station recommendations.

Since the user is already logged into their account, they can easily take action on any of the savings presented, all without leaving their card statement. Users customize their statements to display preferred discounts and control the number and type of savings presented.

For financial institutions that leverage the Yodlee platform to power their online banking and billpay, BillShrink is also announcing that StatementRewards is now compatible with the Yodlee platform. It will be available via all the standard BillShrink integration options and also as a bank brandable FinApp in the new Yodlee FinApp Store.

"Working with BillShrink to integrate their rewards and analysis platform further supports Yodlee's core goal to drive online banking revenue and help banks engage their customers," said Joe Polverari, Yodlee's chief marketing and strategy officer.

About Yodlee

Leading financial institutions and portals trust Yodlee to power critical online finance applications that increase profitability and drive more value from the online channel. Yodlee has proven personal financial management, payments, and customer acquisition solutions that unify all personal financial account information to deliver a simple, centralized and secure way for consumers to manage all of their financial tasks anytime, anywhere. Yodlee makes financial institutions' websites essential to their customers and generates new deposit and revenue opportunities. Yodlee has a patented data, payments and risk management utility that supports more than 12,000 account sources and over 120,000 different account types. More than 200 leading financial institutions and portals offer Yodlee-powered solutions to millions of customers worldwide. Yodlee is headquartered in Redwood City, California. For more information, visit www.yodlee.com.

About BillShrink

Since BillShrink's launch in 2008, the company has helped 1.5 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 ten 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(SM), BillShrink brings the power and breadth of its money-saving platform directly to users within their online bank statements. BillShrink is working with the country's leading merchants and financial institutions so that users can now receive and customize money-saving offers from their favorite merchants and service providers directly within their credit card statement.

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, Consumer Reports, Fortune, The Dr. Oz Show, The Today Show, CNN, ABC and CBS. The company publishes the popular "Shrinkage is Good" blog, which features commentary on the latest economic news and savings tips. BillShrink is headquartered in Redwood City, California. For more information, please visit www.billshrink.com.

SOURCE BillShrink