March 9th, 2012
Review: Barclaycard Ring Card Brings Crowdsourcing to the Credit Card Industry
UPDATE: You can now apply for the Barclaycard Ring MasterCard
Have you ever wanted to pick your credit cards features? The new Barclaycard Ring MasterCard might just let you do that.
Barclays US, the payments business of Barclays in the United States, recently announced the new Barclaycard Ring as the “first social credit card.” What does that mean? It’s being designed and built through online community suggestions, also known as crowdsourcing. The company hopes to change the face of the credit card industry through this new approach.
How exactly? Well, those details remain a ltitle fuzzy. It’s difficult to tell from the card’s website what exactly the Barclaycard community will be able to influence about the card’s future features. What is clear is that Barclays hopes to become a company that listens to its community members by turning suggestions made through social media channels into real, product-changing action.
“You + Community + Barclaycard”
In addition to Barclaycard Ring’s promise to keep the terms simple, Barclaycard will be providing its community with a forum—via social media—to exchange ideas, knowledge and send direct feedback to the company about the card and potential future features. This video suggestions that community members will be able to vote on crowdsourced ideas that will result in changes to the card.
It’s also sharing privileged material with its community: Cardmembers can will be able to view the profit and loss statement on the card to give insight into how the card is generating revenue for the company. This is the first time Barclays has been completely transparent with cardmembers in this manner.
“Built on a community”
It will be a while before we begin to see the effects of the Barclaycard Ring community on product features. But it’s interesting to speculate about the kinds of features a community could influence, such as:
- A generous cash-back rewards program in exchange for a low annual fee. (The card is currently annual fee-free.)
- An even lower variable APR if cardmembers maintain on-time payments for six months. (The card currently comes with a low 8 percent variable APR.)
- No foreign transaction fee. (As opposed to the current 1 percent.)
What features would you want to see in a crowdsourced credit card?
Bottom Line: Currently the card is in private alpha testing, but it will be available to the public in the spring.
It’s likely that, after the alpha testing, Barclaycard will reveal some of its crowdsourced findings. In the meantime, you can request an invite to become a part of the community and—who knows?—be a part of changing the face of the credit card industry.
Disclaimer: All information posted to this site was accurate at the time of its initial publication. Efforts have been made to keep the content up to date and factual. This content is not provided or commissioned by the bank or issuer. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of the bank or issuer, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank or issuer. For complete product details visit bank or issuer website for details.
