Ally wants people to play with an AR app during the Super Bowl

The ability to see a customer's finances as an almost-tangible, visual representation may not be a mainstream part of online banking, but Ally is launching an augmented reality game to coincide with the Super Bowl to nudge customers to grow their savings. Called Ally Big Save, customers can use the savings app during Super Bowl commercials this Sunday. Upon launching the app, customers drag falling bills superimposed on their home environment into a digital piggybank and based on their performance, accumulate points. They can win cash prizes, but the main purpose of the activity is to help customers think of their personal finances in a different way. "While the game is a lot of fun, it's also a way for Ally to help consumers focus on saving for something bigger to make a more meaningful impact on what matters most to them and those they care about," said Andrea Brimmer, Ally's chief marketing and public relations officer. Ally Bank is the latest to experiment with augmented reality, which developers can use to create experiences that bridge the physical and online worlds. "[It's] meant to challenge consumers to think critically about the savings goals they set for themselves and their loved ones," said Brimmer. "We wanted to make it fun and engaging, while at the same time get consumers to think about something very serious that has a huge impact on peoples’ lives." For AR to become more common among mainstream banks, it would require greater adoption across industries, and banks would need to get the customer experience right by using AR to engage customers more deeply and authentically than novel use cases.

Ally isn't alone among financial brands dabbling in VR and AR technology. Citi has a partnership with Live Nation and NextVR to produce a series of live virtual reality concerts as part of its “Backstage with Citi” initiative, which rewards its card members with such events. It also has a longstanding partnership with NBC and the Today Show where it presents a concert series and did the first ever VR concert livestream on the Today Show. Wells Fargo has created a virtual reality challenge that connects users with the brand by taking them through the history of Wells Fargo, beginning in the 1860s. AR and VR are scratching the surface of financial products too. In May, BNP Paribas introduced a VR-based app for retail banking that allows users to virtually access their account activity and transaction records. Intuit has experimented with visualizing one’s financial health as a forest and MoneyLion launched an AR tool last year to project customers' finances as a visual stack. Brimmer didn't rule out the possibility for future AR banking applications and experiments, though she didn't specify how or when to expect them. "We will come back throughout the year with other creative executions that get consumers to take a higher order view of their money including through other large-scale disruptor campaigns as well as our traditional, digital and contextual social marketing," Brimmer said.