Its been pretty bland for a while now, with the credit crisis dominating the banking landscape, regulation looming on social lending, no sign of blogs for Banks, and generally not much new stuff.
Well in true form Jim at Netbanker exclusively highlights a new service, SmartyPig (not sure about that name), backstopped by a Bank (not a Credit Union for once!!).
The innovation is that this is deposit focussed. Click through to Netbanker for details, and its and American only service. Now this is interesting, and something to think about!
How about this recipe? Take a basic FDIC-insured savings account, spice it up with automated electronic transfers and email communications, mix in gift/debit cards, wrap the whole thing up in a social network, and top it with a memorable name. What do you have? SmartyPig, the most innovative financial service we’ve seen since Prosper launched two years ago.
How else can Banking be ‘socialised’?
Bankwatch 
I have a feeling that our kids (or I guess, kids’ kids) will be using a service called “FaceBank”.
With “FaceBank”, you share every element of your banking life! Where you spend your money, where you get your money from. It also keeps track of paydays, but also all of your friend’s paydays! Everything is hyperlinked too, so you’ll be able to see all the other people in whatever arbitrary networks you belong to that also just happen to have $12 in their bank account!
Us old schmucks will have no idea why kids are in to such a stupid idea and be shocked at the idea of sharing this kind of information with everyone around us.
Well, some guy in Korea took facebank.com, but I’m now the proud owner of FaceBanker.com!
Hah! .. good for you Dan … that might be worth something!
Colin
Agree with you on the name….too bad they couldn’t have gotten rights to SmartPig, without the Y. That would be a cool name. That domain is already in use as an AdSense-optimized referral site.
Yes, the name leaves something to be desired, but I think you guys are right to highlight this as something genuinely new in this space.