first direct teams up with Bud for data enrichment capabilities

By Megha Bhattacharya

first direct today announced new transaction details feature on its mobile banking app, thus making it easier for customers to understand their spending, reducing confusion relating to unrecognised transactions. This announcement marks the integration of Bud’s data enrichment capabilities into first direct’s mobile app.

Chris Pitt, Chief Executive of first direct, said, “Our focus has always been to only deliver features customers want and need. This provides valuable insight into your spending, making it easier to see what each transaction was for, and also easier to spot what is an unrecognised transaction.”

“Co-creating transaction enrichment with Bud gives us a launch pad to start rolling out a bunch of new features to customers, which will provide them with more exciting, bespoke features such as an in-app marketplace and personalised recommendations”.

first direct customers using the app via iOS and Android will now be able to see clean merchant names, merchant logos, and transaction categories. Initially, transactions are tagged into one of over 100 categories, with Bud’s identification service being used to recognise around 3,000 UK merchants.

Chris Pitt added, “We’re aiming to be a challenger to the challenger banks, and this is a key step for us on our journey to roll-out useful features for customers. This enriched data functionality unlocks a world of opportunity for our customer experience as it will give us insights which will underpin a lot of the new features we’re releasing later this year.

Recently, first direct announced that, following the launch of Mobile Chat in 2020, its chatbot – Dot the Bot has received an approval rating of 92%. The company’s Mobile Chat is available to customers once they’re signed into the banking app. It enables people to start, pause, and resume a text conversation with the company without needing to wait for a live connection. Mobile Chat is available on Android and iOS.