If your smartphone hasn't altered your reality enough, U.S. Bank is just about ready with a downloadable app that lets users locate ATMs and bank branches with "augmented reality" technology.
Yes, locator apps abound. But they're evolving from the traditional two-dimensional Mapquest-type street maps with pins on them into real-time street views from the phone's camera, with overlay mixing other digital information such as GPS data.
Hold the phone in front of you to position yourself, and the locations of the nearest U.S. Bank ATMs will pop up.
Called Find US+, the app is part of the latest blitz of developments in mobile banking as lenders race to sink their hooks deeper into customers' digital lives.
Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank is almost done testing its new app, which is not yet available to the public. Mobile transactions are often more profitable for banks because the customers are less costly to serve, plus they're trying to meet the raised expectations for convenience and control that Gen Y customers have, said Mark Schwanhausser, a senior analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research.
"We call them 'monkeyhawks,'" Schwanhausser said.
Mobile banking customers tend to be younger (18 to 44), more affluent and not Caucasian, according to Javelin's research.
While augmented reality is now catching on in banking, it's alive and well in other sectors. Valpak, the coupon company owned by Atlanta-based Cox Media Group, has been using metaio inc.'s junaio mobile augmented reality app to allow smartphone users to point their cameras at something and instantly receive coupons from nearby retailers.