First it was a Salesforce.com job ad that asked for a Klout score of 35 or more. Now, it’s retail banking where US bank start-up Movenbank has secured initial funding to enable it to start rolling out a very different way of determining your financial health that includes “social credit analysis”

[…] The seed round funding will allow Movenbank to further invest in strengthening our already highly motivated team, and in the build-out of CRED – a proprietary financial credibility score using a combination of financial wellness, social media metrics, transactional insight, and feedback loops to provide customers with the ability to understand their day-to-day financial behavior.

The CREDscore is at the heart of what Movenbank offers. Is is credit scoring or rating? No, says the bank:

[…] we take a healthy view of who you are as a person to deliver you CRED. It’s a credibility score, not a credit rating, that lets you know just how financially fit you are and rewards you for spending, saving and living smarter.

That translates into something that looks remarkably similar if only in concept to what firms like Klout, Kred and PeerIndex presently offer that enable you (or anyone) to determine someone’s influence score or ranking via publicly-available data and other information that tracks their activities across the social web, with points accruing to add to a score.

The more points, the more benefits you get in terms of rank and potentially actual goods and services (although there’s no suggestion or indication that this latter aspect is anything Movenbank has in mind).

See how the bank explains CRED via an animated cartoon from that master of disruption, Hugh MacLeod.

Other unique characteristics that make Movenbank stand out include no plastic cards. At all. Instead, it’s all about mobile and contactless payments.

[…] We believe the future of payments and banking is in the mobile phone and mobile wallet. It’s faster, it’s way more secure, and, above all, it provides us the ability to interact with our customers when you spend.

[…] Already you can use your contactless card or mobile phone to pay at merchants around the world, including Best Buy, Walmart, GAP, McDonalds, Starbucks, taxis in New York City, and hundreds of thousands more locations.

Now Google is rolling out their Google Wallet, along with PayPal, Starbucks, Square, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, ISIS and many others now rushing to launch mobile payments capability, the infrastructure is rapidly being deployed. Within a couple of years, contactless payments will be pretty much standard.

Bold claims and predictions, but surely to be expected from a market disruptor.

Movenbank says it’s planning to launch “in 2012.” You can see what it’s like for yourself right now by logging in with your Twitter or Facebook account, connecting your other social networks like Google+ and LinkedIn, and taking the bank’s financial personality test – very clear indicators that this is indeed a banking service different to what you’re used to.

(via PSFK)