Benefits

Discover provides valuable benefits to your consumer and business cardholders, at no cost to you. Each benefit comes complete with marketing materials and support to help you drive awareness and engagement with your cardholders.

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Dark Web Monitoring

Scans the dark web and notifies you if your personal information has been exposed
Includes review of websites and blogs, internet relay chat rooms (IRC), bulletin boards, peer-to-peer sharing networks

Credit Monitoring

Detects and alerts you of suspicious activity through daily monitoring of cardholder’s Experian credit report for new inquiries or accounts
Includes review of credit card accounts, card loans and mortgages

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(-)Hello from the American Bankers Association.
I'm Evan Sparks, editor-in-chief of the ABA Banking Journal.
I'm joined today by Steve Sievert.
Steve is Vice President for Debit Marketing at Discover.
Discover Debit is endorsed
by the American Bankers Association for signature debit.
So I'm really delighted to have Steve here
at our ABA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
to talk a little bit more about what's going on
in the world of signature debit.
Steve, welcome.

(-)Great to be here today, Evan. Thanks for the time.

(-)Well, I'd love it if you could kind of give us
a little overview of Discover Debit.
We've endorsed Discover Debit for a number of years now.
What are some of the key features of the program?
How does it work for banks
that might not be familiar with it?

(-)Discover Debit was launched over 15 years ago
to provide some additional choice in the marketplace.
For years, bankers had a choice of two brands
when it came to the front-of-the-card debit brand
that they could utilize.
And we, at Discover, felt like there was an opportunity
to come into the market with another choice.
So we've had the Discover Debit product
that is the front-of-the-card debit brand
that bankers can utilize for more than 15 years now.
And the key three reasons to believe about Discover Debit
really center on delivering superior net economics
to our clients, simplification and efficiency
in terms of managing the program,
and then support that comes along with the program.
And that support is a dedicated account manager,
it's dedicated marketing support that are all designed
to help the program thrive.

(-)Okay, so you talked a little bit about
the superior economics.
Can you get into that a little bit?
How does that work for banks that are using Discover Debit?

(-)So we're all familiar with the notion
that price isn't a strategy,
and we believe that at Discover.
But we also know our audience, and we're talking to bankers,
we're selling this product to bankers,
so we know price is incredibly important.
And one of the ways that we compete
as a challenger brand in this space
is to deliver superior net economics.
What exactly does that mean?
That means we're highly competitive in the interchange
that we deliver to banks,
and we are the lowest among the debit network providers
in terms of the fees we charge.
And an ABA member bank not only gets the benefit
of that already low all-in program fee,
but they get a benefit of a discount as well
for being an ABA member.
And again, we know that that price can't carry the day
for the product throughout its entire life cycle,
but competing on the economics we believe
is incredibly important because of the nature of debit
representing, for many banks, anywhere from 25%
to a third of net interest income.
And you are going to see, as an ABA member bank,
a boost to your bottom line in utilizing Discover,
which can be used to invest in other areas of your bank.
Can be used to reward your clients
in terms of how they use the debit card.
And we believe very strongly in delivering
that better-than economic value proposition
to be able to reinvest in the program overall for banks.

(-)You also talked a little bit about the support
and the resources that Discover provides.
Can you go into that a little bit more,
a bit more in detail?
What can banks expect in terms of the support
that they will receive from Discover Debit
when they're partnering with you all?

(-)As a challenger brand, we know we have to differentiate
ourselves in many ways, and one of the key ways
that we do that is through service.
Bankers will get a dedicated account manager
assigned to them.
They don't call an 800 number to get a hold of somebody
when they want to talk about a particular issue
or they want to talk about better optimizing
their debit program.
They get an individual to call and work with directly.
So there's account management support.
And in addition to that, I oversee marketing for Debit
at Discover, we provide a dedicated
marketing account manager to banks as well.
So we're helping them think about ways
to better engage with cardholders.
We're thinking about promotions that they might run
to incentivize cardholders to use their cards even more.
And that support, in addition to people,
comes with an online platform that banks can utilize
to customize marketing materials
directly to promote their debit programs.
And we've seen significant success in utilizing
these services, particularly on the marketing side
where, during a campaign period, for example,
we're able to increase the usage of the card more than 10,
sometimes even 15% on a year-over-year basis
because we're really focused on marketing the debit card
in that particular campaign period.
And that's one of the ways
that we differentiate the program.
It's dedicated account management support,
dedicated marketing services as well.

(-)Yeah.
You talked a bit about customization.
Can you speak to the customization options
that are available to banks looking to integrate
Discover Debit's debit offering,
program into their offerings?

(-)One of the key ways that we provide some customization
is we truly believe that the debit program
and the debit card itself doesn't belong to us as the brand.
It belongs to the bank.
There is no requirement, for example, for the bank
to utilize our Discover logo on the front of the card.
That front of the card real estate,
which is vitally important, should be owned by the bank.
When the bank is interacting with their cardholders,
that should be an interaction that builds the relationship
between the bank and the cardholder, not the brand.
Our brand takes a back seat to that relationship.
We're there with the necessary technology.
We're there with the ability, for example,
to utilize a mobile wallet.
We're there with the ability to utilize
person-to-person payment functionality.
But when it comes to the relationship,
we are laser focused on making sure that our brand
is supportive of the relationship between the bank
and the cardholder.

(-)You talked a little bit about, you know, P2P payments,
mobile wallets, what other ways is Discover Debit
helping to innovate and helping their banks to kind of offer
the next level of service through the debit program?

(-)Well, it starts more in-house.
And what I mean by that is what we're providing
in terms of services directly to the bank,
things that the cardholder themselves might not be aware of.
I think for example, fraud is a huge issue in our industry.
We all know that.
At Discover, we believe in a collaborative approach
in working together with our clients,
working together with other industry partners
to battle fraud.
So we have functionality that is early detection
on the fraud front.
We provide a score in the message to the issuer
to be able to decision on whether a transaction
is a valid transaction or is fraudulent.
That helps to identify fraud early,
cut down on fraud losses,
another way that we partner, from a technology perspective,
specifically in the fraud space.

(-)Do consumers ever come to the bank with questions
about acceptance of Discover
compared with other competitors?
And how do you help the banks that are participating
in the program navigate those questions?

(-)One of the ways that we start at the very early outset
of the relationship is to go into the market of the bank
and do an assessment in terms of where does acceptance lie.
There is still a perception in the the marketplace
that Discover acceptance isn't on par with the other brands.
And we've worked very hard over the last several years
to not only minimize that perception issue,
but also increase our acceptance in those marketplaces.
So when we're preparing a market,
we make sure that we take a look at all of the transactions
that that bank is having on their previous brand,
overlay our acceptance to identify any work
that we have to do to increase acceptance.
And what we've found, I would say,
over the last five years in particular
is acceptance isn't the gating factor,
it isn't the barrier that it used to be in the marketplace,
because when we do that overlay,
we oftentimes see a more than 99.5% match
in terms of the transactions that we can process and accept
versus the previous brand.
Still means there might be a little bit of work to do
to increase acceptance in that marketplace,
but it isn't nearly the issue that it used to be years ago.
The lingering issue is really more of a perception
that is overcome when the cards are launched,
and cardholders are having a good experience
knowing that they can use their card virtually everywhere
they used the card with the previous brand.

(-)Well, that's certainly an example of how analytics
and insight can help work with the bank,
help address any questions that the consumer may have.
What other ways are you putting analytics and insight
to work to benefit your card issuers?

(-)We all know we live in a data-driven world.
You don't make any decision today as a banker
without having access to data,
and certainly that holds true for the debit program as well.
One of the applications, one of the tools
that our Discover Debit clients get as part of working
with Discover is access to our Debit Dashboard.
And the Debit Dashboard provides a real time look
at the performance of the portfolio.
This is done by merchant category code.
It can be cut in terms of the data view
by interchange revenue, looking at various factors
of the performance of that program
so that bankers know real time
where there might be some opportunities
to, say, further penetrate a particular category.
Are their card holders not using debit as much
for purchase at the pump, for example?
We could then partner with them to develop
a marketing program that would be designed to incentivize
and promote the usage of the debit card at gas stations,
for example, or other everyday spend opportunities.
That access to that data is incredibly valuable
because it not only gives the banker a real time look
at how the program is performing,
but it also gives those insights to see
where the program could be performing even better
into the future.

(-)Yeah, you've given a lot of examples,
and as part of this conversation,
I'd love it if you could share maybe one or two more
of your favorite success stories of issuers
working with Discover Debit.

(-)Look, it's all about delivering bottom line performance.
We have got to be, as a challenger brand,
better than the competitors when it comes
to the bottom line impact of the Discover Debit program.
And depending on the previous relationship
with the other brand, we see our bankers realizing
anywhere from a 10 to 15,
sometimes even more than a 20% increase
in the overall bottom line profitability
of the debit program,
and that's consistent across the board.
We see that time and time again where we're able to deliver
better-than economics to our banks.
So I wanna start with that one
because economics are so important, but one-

(-)We are talking about bankers after all.

(-)Exactly.

(-)But one from a marketing point of view
that I've always loved is we partnered
with one of our clients on our Debit & Win It program,
which is essentially a sweepstakes
where anytime a cardholder uses his or her card,
they're entered into a sweepstakes for a chance
to win a prize.
And this particular bank had a situation
where one of their account holders
had overdrawn his account.
Never a pleasant conversation to have
when you've gotta call a customer and say,
"Sir, you're overdrawn on your account."
But it just so happened that in this particular campaign,
the stars aligned in such a way that this individual
who was overdrawn was also the winner
of a $500 cash prize in the Debit & Win It campaign.
So it was a great situation where the bank was able
to make that phone call and inform that account holder,
"Yes sir, you are overdrawn by $50.
So that's the bad news,
but the good news is you're our winner
of our Debit & Win It program,
and you have $500 coming to you,
or, in this case, $450 coming to you."
So those are great opportunities for us to be a part of
and how we love to support our Discover Debit issuers
in surprising and delighting their cardholders.

(-)Well Steve, thank you so much for coming to ABA today
to talk a little bit more about Discover Debit.
And I learned some more about Discover Debit
and the debit marketplace,
and I really appreciate hearing from you today.

(-)My pleasure. Thanks for the time.

(-)For those of you watching, you can learn more
about Discover Debit at aba.com/discoverdebit.
Thanks so much for watching.

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Endorsed by the American Bankers Association, Discover® Debit offers flexibility to meet your needs with simple rules, transparent fees, the security of early-warning fraud alerts, plus real-time authorization blocking. Let’s start building your debit card program today. Find out more at aba.com/discoverdebit.

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Discover® Debit: Debit Card Program

ABA Member Discount

Benefits

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Benefits of a Discover Debit Card

Webinars

Building Loyalty and Revenue: A Case Study with Colony Bank’s CEO and Discover

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Our Due Diligence Process

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