Banking Via Twitter?

In the latest example of how just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, one credit union has decided to offer a new feature, dubbed "tweetMyMoney," that allows members to interact with their accounts via Twitter. Can't wait for the next version, "tweetSomeoneElsesMoney." "tweetMyMoney, available exclusively to Vantage members! With tweetMyMoney, you can monitor your account balance, deposits, withdrawals, holds and cleared checks with simple commands. And, you can even transfer funds within your account. It's all available on Twitter, 24/7!"

"Hey, I know what'd be great!"

[djkitsch]

"This Twitter thing, yeah, it's all, like, Web Two Point Oh, and customer synergy interaction right, and then people can, like, interact with their data and it'll be all like, in the Cloud! Yeah!"

I can guarantee something very much like the above took place in their marketing department shortly before this was built. I've spent 10 years listening to this from marketing geeks - nothing more dangerous than a new technology half-understood.

A new joke every day!

[wastedlife]

Dear Vantage customer, our free joke service will send you a tweet every day with a new hilarious joke. Please tweet "#tran $1000 f1 t123456" to @myvcu to start!

Re:What's so bad?

[PhxBlue]

While the public messages get all the press, people who don't use twitter may not realize that you can send direct messages on twitter, which are private. That's what this system is using.

Private? Yes. Encrypted? Not so much.

Spent a bit of time in banking industry

[FuturShoc1k]

What really surprises me about the idea of 'banking via twitter' is how the originating bank got this concept past their internal compliance officer/team/department. I just came off of a 6-month stint at an up-and-coming regional bank. While there, I learned a couple of really interesting lessons about banking in general: 1. Absolutely every breath they take and every move they make (rock on, Police) is filtered through federal and state regulatory compliance. 2. To my surprise, most non-national banks think nothing of throwing money at software solutions with outside vendors and these banks rarely require direct interconnectivity with what is referred to as their 'core' system. This, as it happens, is often an expression of point #1. So, I say #1 to point out that *someone* familiar with regulatory compliance must have signed off on the Twitter-banking idea. Many here have noted that the communication with a user's accounts is pushed into a private realm at Twitter, but that doesn't sound like an adequate separation to me. 'Private' tweeting or not, it seems to me that most compliance auditors would reel at the mere suggestion of tossing any account information into that electronic pool. They would also likely need to get some kind of compliance statement from Twitter itself to make the bank tweeting product available. I say point #2 just to say that I'm convinced there's alot of untapped opportunity in banking for hosted applications. ;-)