Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Customers also know that they do have access to their account

balances, and that once they log into their bank or payment-card accounts, they can hand that information off to whomever they please. So why can’t they authorize someone else to access that information? If the chain can aggregate a lot of information about purchases and personal behavior, why can’t customers have a third-party aggregate a lot of information about account balances?

There are very reasonable technical and legal answers to those questions, having to do with security and liability and business strategy. And customers don’t care. Their question is simple: Mr. Retailer, you want to make it easy to get and use information about me. Why are you making it hard for me to get and use information about me from you?

It’s the type of question that corrodes the warm, friendly feeling toward retailers that CRM and loyalty programs are built on. And it’s going to get worse the deeper chains dive into financial services that have the store’s brand on them but aren’t directly controlled by the chain.

Store-branded credit cards are an old problem, and so are pre-paid debit cards with a retailer’s name on them. But many chains are ready to raise the stakes: Costco already offers home mortgages, and a survey that came out on Monday (Dec. 3) said one-third of Americans would consider getting a mortgage from Walmart, which already does tax returns and makes small-business loans.

That’s going to change the way customers think about CRM data and loyalty programs. It’s going to give them more reasons not to trust the chain. (One reason they like the idea of a Walmart or Costco mortgage is probably that they trust Walmart and Costco more than their banker. How long do you think it will take for that to flip?) And the less they trust the chain, the more loyalty programs will be squeezed. The cost of financial services may be some lost CRM data.

There’s no obvious workaround for any chain whose management has decided that financial services are a big business opportunity. There’s no way of knowing how much those financial services will cut into CRM data growth—or whether they’ll actually spur it, if the chain figures out how to keep customers happy on both the loyalty and the financial sides.

But it’s already past time to start working out how you’ll deal with that shift, because it’s already started.