Last October, Credit Agricole Group, the mega (but troubled) French bank, became what is thought to be the first traditional bank to release a public read/write API.
So what has happened since the launch of the Credit Agricole Store? Did the bank lose customers? Did the API lessen the stickiness of its 33.5 million retail banking customers and 20.5 million commercial clients?
At least on the surface, all is just fine at Credit Agricole, which showcased the app store at Finovate Europe today.
The store hawks 84 apps now, after launching with about 40. Many are personal finance-related, like FunkyBank, a mobile app which slaps color on “sad and monotonous banking applications,” or Pimp My Bank, an Android app that allows CA customers to customize their accounts with images, icons and custom fonts. But there are also games in the app store — actually, quite a few of them.
Now, whether Credit Agricole launched the app store because its revenue through the first nine months of 2012 was down nearly 14% compared to the same period in 2011 is, in our view, beside the point. The CA app store is reportedly generating about 100,000 visits per month, and while that’s not much considering that the bank has 54 million customers, it’s something.
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