Email is too slow for fraud
By the time a customer reads the email about the suspicious charge, the card is already through three more transactions. SMS is the channel that catches it in the moment.
Tells delivers balance alerts, payment reminders, fraud notifications, and statement-ready pings with FFIEC, GLBA, and CFPB-aware copy and routing. Bank-grade messaging infrastructure, audit trail on every send, no separate compliance bolt-on.
The problem
Banks, credit unions, and fintechs need a channel that delivers fast, stays inside the regulatory lane, and leaves an audit trail per send. SMS is that channel. Tells handles the compliance layer, the consent ledger, and the retention story so your team focuses on the customer, not the regulator-response binder.
By the time a customer reads the email about the suspicious charge, the card is already through three more transactions. SMS is the channel that catches it in the moment.
FFIEC, GLBA, CFPB, Reg-E. The template language and the audit posture have to be there before the first send, not after the first regulator letter.
Every send needs content, recipient, delivery state, and the regulatory tag attached, retrievable years later. CSV exports from a generic vendor do not count.
A non-bank-grade messaging vendor adds risk to the program. Encrypted at rest and in transit, US-based ops, and consent-aware routing are table stakes for financial services.
The path
The repeatable sequence we run with banks, credit unions, and fintechs. Stand up the core integrations, lock in the regulatory copy, and reconcile monthly so the audit story stays clean.
Wire Tells into the systems that generate the alert. Core banking, card processor, loan-origination platform, fraud engine. See integrations for the supported stacks.
Reg-E, GLBA privacy, FFIEC authentication language, CFPB-aligned complaint copy. We template the variants so the right disclosure ships with the right send, every time.
Separate consent buckets for marketing, servicing, and fraud alerts. Opt-out applies to the right lane only, so the fraud-alert path stays clean even after a marketing unsubscribe.
Per-send audit trail exports, content + recipient + delivery state + regulatory tag. Reconcile against fraud and complaint logs so the program survives the next exam.
Where it shows up
Six recurring use cases that cover the bulk of customer-facing SMS in banking, credit unions, and fintech. Each one ships with the regulatory language and consent posture pre-mapped.
Push balance, low-balance, and overdraft alerts the moment the threshold trips. Reduces NSF surprise complaints and gives the customer time to move money before the fee hits.
Loan, credit-card, and auto-pay reminders with one-tap pay links. Cuts late-payment fees and keeps delinquency buckets short across the loan book.
Real-time fraud-detection alerts with two-way reply. Customer confirms or declines the charge by text, and the agent can lock the card, freeze the account, or escalate to a banker.
Monthly statement availability alerts with secure deep-link into online banking. Reduces paper-statement print costs and improves digital-engagement metrics.
Auto, mortgage, HELOC, and small-business application updates by SMS. Customers see decisioning milestones in real time and abandonment drops sharply at the conditional-approval stage.
Acknowledge and route consumer complaints inside CFPB-aligned timeframes. Two-way SMS captures the response on the record and the audit trail attaches to the case file automatically.
Why Tells
Tells was built for regulated channels first. The audit posture, the consent model, and the disclosure templates are core to the product, not a bolt-on we wrote for one bank deal.
Encrypted at rest and in transit. US-based operations, role-based access, and tamper-evident logs. The same carrier-direct routes that power high-volume SMS with audit retention added on top.
Every message carries content, recipient, delivery state, consent reference, and regulatory tag. Retained for the retention window your auditor expects. Exportable on demand for FFIEC exams or CFPB requests.
Reg-E, GLBA, FFIEC, and CFPB-aligned templates already mapped to the use cases above. See our compliance posture for the controls we maintain at the platform layer.
Separate consent buckets for marketing, servicing, and fraud alerts. A marketing STOP does not silence the fraud-alert path, so the customer who told you to stop selling still gets the suspicious-charge text. Integrations push consent state back to the system of record.
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Read more →Book a 20-minute walkthrough. We will show the fraud-alert console, the consent ledger, and the audit-export workflow on a live sandbox so your risk team can see the controls before the pilot kicks off.