Coming soon to your bank statement: Tax info & Macy's coupons

Greetings from Finovate Fall New York, an annual conference where financial software companies show off their new products, both for consumers and the business community. Today and tomorrow, I'll be writing about brand-new financial apps for consumers, as well as new developments by established online services.—Tobie Stanger

Here are a couple of financial apps that you might be seeing soon on your bank statement:

On-the-spot bargains, deals and coupons. Billshrink, a web site that analyzes prices and rates of several consumer services, including cell phone plans, credit cards and CDs, introduced an app that lets vendors embed special deals and coupons directly into your electronic banking or credit-card statement. On the line showing what you paid last month for your Verizon Wireless bill, for instance, Billshrink might offer you a "personalized bill analysis" and then suggest another wireless service that could save you $35 a month. On the line showing what you paid at Kohl's, a green icon with a dollar sign might alert you to a Macy's offer for a $50 coupon for $35. On the line regarding a charge for gas, clicking on the message, "Find cheaper gas in (fill in your location)" would lead to a site showing where the bargains are. Billshrink is looking for more bank partners for its service; it says that 5,000 retailers and services have signed up to participate.

Tax information on your online bank or credit-card statement. H&R Block, partnering with Yodlee, a financial-information aggregator, was at Finovate today to enlist banks to sign up for its new TaxCenter product, which, among other functions, analyzes customers' bank and credit-card statements and instantly shows them tax information such as potential deductions.

If, for instance, you'd recently made debited several charitable donations from your bank account, your statement would instantly show how those donations would affect your upcoming Form 1040. You could also click to an H&R Block "Ask a Professional" page to ask an expert a tax question and, of course, connect directly to Block's web site to start preparing your tax form. The product also would let you instantly download Form 1099's from your various financial accounts into your Form 1040. And you could arrange quite easily to have your refund direct-deposited into one or more of your accounts.

Why would a consumer care, when most of that is available through Block itself, and for free if your tax situation is fairly simple? Well, it could cut out a few steps from the process of preparing a simple return. It's also fun to see tax savings show up on your bank statement, especially a figure that gets bigger over time. But if you itemize or have a somewhat complicated return, this app is probably not going to tell you the whole story.

At Finovate today, Block folks are clearly most interested in telling banks why they should care: To capture the $100 billion in refunds that the IRS says don't go through direct deposit. And I can't argue with that motivation; we've always recommended direct deposit as the most secure and quick way to receive a tax refund.