Financial services giant USAA completed a successful test this week that found it exploring ways to add bitcoin support to its traditional financial monitoring resource.
The trial saw USAA providing its members with the ability to check Coinbase balances directly from their web and mobile accounts, alongside more traditional value monitoring services that track assets such as real estate or automobile investments. Introduced in November, the project is now available to all USAA members.
Speaking to CoinDesk, USAA project lead Darrius Jones indicated that users gave a ‘clear yes’ to the trial, a sign that prompted the company to move quickly in making the service available more widely to its members – many of whom, USAA has said, are bitcoin users.
Jones told CoinDesk: "There’s always a gap between feedback and reality. Sometimes highly vocal members who are dogmatic about a capability may or may not represent entirety of the membership. But was this something people wanted." Jones said the trial saw impressive growth in sign-ups due to what he described as strong word-of-mouth promotion. Roughly 50% of those who signed up, he noted, were notified about the bitcoin option after hearing about it through emails, tweets and social media.
"The pilot expanded by 50% just by word of mouth,” he remarked.
Overall, Jones sought to describe the project as one of the fastest completed by USAA, indicating that it took his team just 90 days to introduce the option, respond to user feedback and then release it to its wider membership.
Founded by members of the US military, USAA boasts a strong customer base of military members and their families. The company’s work with bitcoin extends beyond the account monitoring option, having taken part in Coinbase’s $75m Series C investment round, which closed in January 2015 . Risk and reward
Jones said that the […]
