The Explore Current Account was launched in June of last year and is the first current account in Ireland to pay customers for using their debit cards. Every time customers pay with their card in-store or online they get 10c back and customers can earn up to €5 per month on this feature alone.
In just 8 months since launch, we’ve paid over €122,000 to our customers just for using their new Explore Current Account debit card.
Customers are now signing up to the new account at a rate of approximately 3,000 per month and a total of 20,000 have signed up to date.
The Explore account has a number of other great reward features for our customers including cashback on bills to certain utility providers such as Sky, SSE Airtricity, and mobile phone provider iD. Account holders also get access to a personalised rewards scheme called GoREWARDS, which gives cashback on a wide range of high street and online brands, in partnership with Visa.
In addition to the €122,000 that we’ve paid to customers for using their debit card, customers of Sky who use their Explore account to pay their regular Sky bill have received almost €10,000 in cashback from Sky over the past 8 months too.
An analysis of card usage suggests that a customer using our Explore account for their regular banking and utility bills with Sky, SSE Airtricity, and iD in January could have received over €9 cashback in that month alone.
Lorraine Peters, Head of Current Accounts at permanent tsb, says that customer-centric innovation is going to be increasingly important for banks in the coming years.
Young customers today just won’t settle for the very passive, one-dimensional way in which banks have traditionally dealt with customers. Banks are going to have to become more dynamic and more creative to remain relevant for millennials.
Ms. Peters says that there was enormous potential for customers to receive extra payments for increased use of their accounts:
We believe the future of banking is with loyalty and in designing products that can encourage and reward loyalty amongst customers. We’re thrilled to have given back over €120,000 in direct payments to customers but we’re hoping to pay eligible customers a lot more than that as they increase the use of their cards to pay for routine purchases.
