Scotiabank Partners with Sensibill to Digitize and Track
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It’s tax time again, and for many people across the U.S. and Canada that entails one major headache—organizing and managing receipts. Whether it’s an individual or business, keeping, organizing and categorizing receipts is critical to maximizing tax deductions, not to mention for good general fiscal management purposes.
However, one Canadian bank is partnering with a fintech innovator to make receipt management much more of a breeze for their customers. Just last year, Toronto-based Scotiabank announced a partnership with Canadian fintech company Sensibill to offer a mobile receipt management solution called eReceipts that will to make it easier for Scotiabank customers to manage their finances. The eReceipts app serves as an extension to Scotiabank’s mobile banking application and digital wallet.
Scotiabank is one of Canada’s largest banks, serving more than 23 million customers across the dominion and 50 countries outside Canada. And at 184 years of age, Scotiabank is older than Canada itself. With over $1 trillion in total assets, Scotiabank invests more than $2 billion per year in technology initiatives. Partnering with Sensibill to create eReceipts was a natural fit, as it’s a Toronto-based startup that was incubated through Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone initiative. Sensibill has grown to become a white-label software provider of software solutions to help banking customers better manage receipts from both desktop and mobile.
While there has been technology available to aid in receipt management, it’s still incredibly difficult to categorize and drill down into the detail of specific receipts, especially on a mobile device. What makes the eReceipts functionality so unique is that it’s the first app to automatically match specific credit and debit card transactions to the right receipt. After making a purchase, customers can take a photo of the receipt directly from their Scotiabank banking app. Then, through a combination of Optical Character Recognition and machine learning software, the receipt is matched to the proper transaction in the user’s account history. When users drill down into the transaction, information from the receipt has already been extracted, structured and presented in a clear, easy to navigate format. Scotiabank customers can see all the information about a receipt they need without ever having to look at a piece of paper.
Scotiabank customers have been interacting with eReceipts an average of 38 times per month to track both personal and business expenses. So in addition to making their customers’ lives easier, eReceipts is increasing engagement with Scotiabank’s mobile application—and with it the potential to reduce overall customer attrition rates as users continue to rely on it. Receipts can also be categorized as business or personal, and can be annotated, tagged and stored in folders. In fact, around 48 percent of users utilize folders to organize expenses. Hashtags can also be assigned to receipts for ease of search purposes, along with receipt text itself being searchable. And when tax time rolls around, all receipts can be exported in PDF format, along with a matching Excel or CSV file to make preparation easier.
Scotiabank is the first of Canada’s five largest banks to roll out an application like eReceipts that can automatically match paper receipts to the corresponding transaction. Although there are solutions on the market that can capture receipts, eReceipts is the first to extract and contextualize data on such a granular level. Sensibill’s unique deep machine learning, combined with a powerful receipt processing engine, can even associate product names and SKUs with transactions. The result is that otherwise vague transactions become extremely clear when users begin to drill down. Usage of eReceipts has exceeded initial targets by upwards of 300 percent, with positive reviews and shares springing up organically.
In the future, Scotiabank may be able to leverage this additional data to improve customer experience and enhance revenue. Having access to consumer purchase history at the item-level could help Scotiabank better understand, and anticipate, their customers’ needs and preferences. The goal is to better personalize the banking experience, and offer targeted banking products or services based on an analysis of receipt and purchasing history. For example, if Scotiabank notices that a couple is purchasing items like cribs, baby formula and diapers, it might assume there’s a baby on the way and begin marketing a 529 College Savings Plan. In fact, Sensibill is already working to add an “insights” component for partners like Scotiabank, so that customer data generated by eReceipts can be more effectively extracted, organized and analyzed.
The partnership between Scotiabank and Sensibill is noteworthy because it tackles a problem that everyone seems to face in the physical world. With eReceipts, the two companies are taking a huge step towards helping people stay organized, maximize their tax benefits and know exactly how they’re spending their money.
And perhaps most importantly, eReceipts points to a world where we can finally toss that musty old receipt-filled shoebox in the closet.
This is one of 10 case studies that focus on examples of successful innovation between banks and financial technology companies working in partnership. The participants featured in this article were finalists at the 2017 Best of FinXTech Awards.