Here’s a quick exercise. What links these different outfits: online bank ING Direct; Bankons, a mobile startup that creates geo-located offers; Bundle, a Citibank spin-off that specializes in the analysis of spend data; Sail, a mobile point-of-sale card-swiping device1? Here’s a hint – all of these companies were acquired to bolster the digital services of a leading financial services organization. We are talking about Capital One. Since its founding as a credit card company in 1988, Capital One Financial Corp. has grown into a diversified bank with more than 65 million customer accounts worldwide. It is not hard to see why Capital One is investing heavily in digital technologies. It conducts over 80,000 big data experiments a year. Currently, 75% of customer interactions with Capital One are digital, and this number is only expected to grow. In Q4 2013, Capital One was one of the most visited websites, with 40 million unique online visitors4.
