Welcome to the fifteenth annual Credit Card Monitor Awards, which highlight the best online and mobile credit card tools and features offered by card issuers in six key areas. The categories selected for this annual report cover only private site features, including the account maintenance capabilities that most impact the customer experience. In this report, we provide examples of the best in class for each of the online and smartphone tools covered and explain why we consider these features to be industry leaders.

1. Credit Card Monitor
2016 Gold Medal Winners

2. Corporate Insight provides competitive intelligence, consulting and user experience research to the nation's
leading financial, health and education institutions. For more than two decades, the firm has tracked technological
developments in the end-user online experience, identifying best practices in online financial services and
investing, mobile finance, social media and other emerging areas. Corporate Insight offers subscription-based
Monitor services in 14 verticals, including banking, healthcare and alumni relations, along with custom research,
digital capabilities audits, special studies, user research and other consulting services. The firm helps its clients—
including 70% of the financial services firms in the Fortune 500—to remain at the forefront of industry trends and
improve their competitive position.
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3. Welcome to the fifteenth annual Credit Card Monitor Awards, which highlight the best online and mobile credit
card tools and features offered by card issuers in six key areas. The categories selected for this annual report cover
only private site features, including the account maintenance capabilities that most impact the customer
experience. In this report, we provide examples of the best in class for each of the online and smartphone tools
covered and explain why we consider these features to be industry leaders.
The Gold Medal is reserved for the most robust and valuable tools, those that most closely achieve the ideal
combination of important features and intuitive functionality. The Silver Medal recognizes tools that offer great
value but lack some of the outstanding qualities of the best tools. Lastly, the Bronze Medal goes to those tools or
features that are imperfect but still offer card holders a strong or valuable experiences.
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4. Medal Chart
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Firm Medal Count
American Express
Bank of America
Barclaycard US
Capital One
Chase
Citicards
Discover
U.S. Bank
USAA

5. Category Overview
Promote Your Firm’s 2016 Monitor Awards!
Corporate Insight is happy to assist all award-winning firms in promoting their honors. For more
information and for examples of past promotions, contact us at pr@corporateinsight.com.
Transaction History
and Search Tools
Statement Centers
Card Payments
Private Site Help
Mobile Self-Service and Help
Balance Transfers

6. Transaction history and search tools enable customers to monitor recent transactions, and this category examines
the functionality, depth and quality of transaction history offered to clients. Within this category, we also consider
the ease with which clients can file disputes from the transaction history page. The information provided with each
transaction is the most important factor in our weightings, followed by the archive length and the ability to sort and
filter transactions.
Transaction History and Search Tools
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American Express wins the gold medal by allowing users
to dispute transactions directly within the expanded
transaction detail and by offering extensive trends
summary graphs, tables and charts.
© CORPORATE INSIGHT

7. Statement Centers
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This category recognizes private site statement centers that are easily accessible, provide readily available monthly
account statements in digital form and offer card holders the option to enroll in paperless delivery. Firms receiving
a medal in this category must offer a significant online statement archive and supply a private site paperless
enrollment function.
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The gold medal winner, Chase, provides an extensive
interface with access to seven years of account
documents.

8. Card Payments
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As scheduled payments have become standardized, firms should dedicate more effort to the complementary
features of their payment interfaces to distinguish their products, from future payment capabilities to flexibility of
payment options. The leading payment interfaces offer customers a mix of account data, including the payment
due date, minimum payment amount, previous statement information, current balance and date of most recent
payment. We continue to take into account the growing importance of mobile banking for credit card customers,
considering mobile capabilities as a part of this category. The ability to submit and process payments seamlessly
across both web and mobile channels plays a factor in this year’s assessment.
© CORPORATE INSIGHT
Gold medal winner Citicards offers a straightforward
payment interface that allows users to make
immediate, future and recurring payments online as
well as a full payment activity interface with past and
pending payments.

9. Balance Transfers
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Balance transfers let customers consolidate balances onto a single card. As firms continue to merge the desktop
and mobile site experiences, this year’s awards incorporate whether customers can transfer balances within the
mobile app—a feature offered by only three firms in the coverage group.
© CORPORATE INSIGHT
Gold medal winner Discover’s overall excellent interface
presents transfer offers with great detail and includes a
thorough savings calculator that lets users compare
available offers. In addition, the firm allows users to
complete balance transfers within its mobile app.

10. Private Site Help
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Private site help facilitates a card holder’s experience, maintaining a comfortable journey servicing a card and
receiving help online. The best firms offer help in a centralized location, with the ability to view context-specific help
as card holders navigate through the private site and the ability to reach a live customer service agent.
© CORPORATE INSIGHT
Gold medal winner Discover provides exceptional
private site help in many forms, including live chat and
contextual help tools. Discover prevails for its strong
site search tool and FAQs in a universal help center and
embedded, contextual FAQs.

11. Mobile Self-Service and Help
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Today, every credit card issuer offers a smartphone app through which users can check their balances, review
transactions and pay their bills. Self-service options and account help availability, however, is less consistent. While
not options that users need every day, self-service features can easily be performed on a smartphone. Offering
these options enhances the omni-channel experience and allows mobile-only users to perform these tasks quickly.
© CORPORATE INSIGHT
Gold medal winner USAA offers the most self-servicing
options in the coverage group and provides an
automated assistant tool that answers all questions,
provides contact information and directs users to
different areas in the app.

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Senior Research Associate
Bank Monitor and Credit Card Monitor
646-929-5151
mbarthold@corporateinsight.com
Meredith Barthold
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