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Wells Fargo & Co., lagging behind its rivals in mobile-banking prowess, is turning to an unlikely source for advice: the video-game industry.
The lender bought a small stake in Context360 Inc., a startup that makes behavior-predicting technology used by game-makers to retain mobile players. For Wells Fargo, similar technology could help it pitch car loans on Saturday mornings when customers visit dealerships, for example, or block a suspicious credit card transaction, according to Stephen Burke, Context360's chief operating officer.
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Like many industries, banking is seeing more customers migrating to mobile devices. Thirty-five percent of people reported using mobile banking in 2014, up from 20 percent three years earlier, according to a survey conducted by the Federal Reserve and published in March.
"Banking is necessary, banks are not."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:53AM
"Sell your possessions, and give to the poor."
(Score: 1) by Hyperturtle on Thursday August 06 2015, @01:52PM
I don't see where they discuss how this is all opt-ed into, or if it is part of the EULA to play free games, and if people are adversely affected because they rage quit, or that they are in a car in the passenger seat and the sensors show they are speeding, streaming music and playing games. Or if paying for the game outright, if not a free-to-play--if these will be bundled in. It could be a bonus feature as part of commonly popular chat clients.
I can imagine it now: The fact that the user is a passenger is not picked up in an Android, so this is presumed that you are driving recklessly and will impact your ability to get a loan. The iBeacon in iphones, perhaps, can use embedded seat sensors to determine where in the car you are seated, and thus conclude you hang out with undesirable people and the association will be used to determine that you are quite the risk.
Tampering with the seat sensors may be punishable according to federal law, remember, as well as turning airplane mode on when not on a plane! That creates a gap in the knowledge gained and this could be considered providing false details in an attempt to secure a loan, by deliberately withholding details that may be considered adverse with the intent of the resulting lack of knowledge as a replacement for the information that may be used to conclude a higher risk for your application loan candidacy.
I think Professor Falken (or Joshua) had it right; the winning move is not to play. Once you get started, it is hard to stop.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:27PM
> a startup that makes behavior-predicting technology used by game-makers to retain mobile players.
Translation: a company that specializes in manipulating people into continuing to fork over cash for useless in-game purchases. They aren't about video games, they are just another marketing company looking to use Big Data to figure out which of your buttons to press in order to trick you into making low-quality spending decisions that benefit their clients. Fuck them and fuck wells fargo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:35PM
They aren't going to learn anything about me. I don't play video games.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:56PM
The fact that you don't play video games says something about you.
and if you do play video games they can determine things about you like what kinda risk taker you are. Do you make risky moves within the game?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by acid andy on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:07PM
Yeah but that's stupid though really because one of the biggest attractions of a video game is the opportunity to explore risky or out of character behaviour without any real world negative consequences.
I suppose to these corporate overlords, it doesn't matter. It's all data. All they have to do is collect, correlate and extrapolate. Oh, and profit. Lots and lots of profit. They hope.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:45PM
*Shrug* It says I don't play video games. That's hardly an earth-shattering revelation. Do you really think it says anything more than that? Seriously? Go ahead and profile me, based on the fact that I don't play video games. Let's see how prescient your insights into my personal habits really are. I dare you!
As the saying goes, life is risk. If they are using a video game to understand that, then they need to get out more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:25PM
I play video games, just not shitty ones, you know, the kind with "in-app purchases" or "free to 'play' (but pay to actually do anything)". I buy all my video game-related items second-hand too, or only use cash if its a new release that I really want. I do my best to make sure there's no information for them to use, and that their extrapolations from how it appears are completely wrong.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday August 07 2015, @04:27AM
They aren't going to learn anything about me. I don't play video games.
They're going for the video game players and you're not doing anything because you* don't play video games...
*As it happens, neither do I.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 1) by jummama on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:07PM
From the article, it sounds like they aren't necessarily targeting data from the games, so much as trying to use similar metric tracking technology to generate notifications when it figures that you're at a car lot, or in a situation where you're more likely to notice and read a notification. So it sounds shady, but I don't think they'll be using data from games at all. I could be wrong though.