Ep. 12 - BankMobile w/ Chief Digital Officer, Dan Armstrong and Jordan Bryant on the Mobile First Podcast powered by Emerge Interactive

Mobile First

Our Guest Dan Armstrong is the Chief Digital Officer at BankMobile, America’s first fee- free mobile first bank. With mobile banking and financial services, telecommunications and technology projects in 40+ countries, Dan brings unique expertise in developing new products, technologies and distribution strategies that accurately match technology with consumers’ needs. For the past 20 years, Dan has worked in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America start-ups, mobile banking/payments, instant-account opening and correspondent banking, telecommunications, NFC, cards, alliances, regulatory, feasibility and automation programs. Here are the highlights of our conversation with our guest: Getting to know Daniel more including his travels, e-telco projects and his learnings regarding the ubiquity of mobile around the world after being in many other continents. As takeaways from trying things out from the rest of the world, Dan shares the bigger things and functionalities that we should bring back. Dan’s observations of countries who are early adopters of technology vis-à-vis the user behavior that they are exhibiting. Dan’s background from having a degree in Philosophy, his real first job as a museum and exhibit designer for an architecture company and how this line of work did him well during his transition to designing websites. He also shares how he transitioned to banking and when the realization that having a mobile services package can very impactful to a lot of markets came about; and the different, interesting ways of how to get people to get a bank account from country to country. The main things that Dan is currently facing and the solutions that he feels would be a great fit to the market. This includes innovating by setting up an entire software services division with his CTO; white labelling by establishing a platform which can be sold to other channels which can be rebranded and repositioned; and doing what they do best: controlling experiences and enabling capabilities without necessarily conquering the world with your own brand. With all the new ways that they are working on in entering the platform, we inquire if Dan notices any user fragmentation and if they have plans to centralize these channels into one platform; plus what their core model differentiator is compared to others in the market. Where he sees the mobile banking will be in the near future and the interesting things that may come about. Rapid Fire Questions What is your definition of innovation? Innovation is a good term but is overused these days. I like the term partnership better – a lot of suppliers and vendors call their customers ‘partners’. Real innovation is doing something that fundamentally takes a step forward or sideways and not just incremental capabilities or UI…I want to take innovation at a higher standard. Would you put more emphasis on the idea or the execution? How would you weigh each of them and why? I believe that the key is really execution. Execute in a way that is so much more unique and attractive to people as execution is the trick to success. In our market, it’s all execution so it’s probably its 80% execution and 20% ideas. What is your biggest learning lesson on your journey so far? One size fits all is certainly not the way this world functions. Look at each market differently and it’s dynamics. What is your favorite business book? The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction by David Quammen What is your favorite digital resource? TechCrunch Krebs on Security What is your favorite app and why? Communications apps such as WhatsApp What is the coolest thing that you are working on right now that you want everyone to know about? We are involved in the working on the patent on the UI of our new app which will change a number of things that mobile banking has never done before.