Mobile Banking
Mobile banking today is in its second youth. After a false start in the period until 2001/2002 with the first version of Wap, many financial institutions are again looking at the potential of the mobile channel. For banking, we believe that the time is right to reassess the value of wireless technology to provide valued customer services, gain efficiency in reaching and communicating with customers and enable secure banking and payment facilities to increasingly mobile customers.
The modern consumer is internet-savvy, mobile and 'always on'. Sending a text message is as normal as sending an email, and the text message might even replace the email for more formal forms of communication. Why send an email if you could send an SMS to your bank instead? With a solid and growing base of users, banks could increase income by differentiating between free and premium banking and payment services. Costs can be optimised in the contact centre by shifting some of the calls to forms of self-service via SMS or Wap / mobile internet.
Mobile banking "2.0" covers the whole spectrum from SMS, phone-based (Wap) banking, browser-based (PDA) banking, mobile payment, contactless commerce and multi-channel direct marketing and customer services.
Whereas most of the SMS-based applications are based on sending (pushing) notifications and alerts to inform the customer of certain events, pull-based applications are offered and used as well. Customers may request account balance status, increase or top-up their credit account, request an additional line of credit, or transfer money from their credit account. Since it is available on every mobile phone, SMS is an easy-to-use and cost-effective way of providing a mobile, two-way banking service. Despite the somewhat negative experiences with Wap some five years ago, Wap banking seems to be back on the rise. Modern phones, in particular smartphones and Java-enabled phones, more capable browsers, and faster mobile networks enable banks to provide interactive banking services that can be used by any customer. With the built-in mobile phone browser or a dedicated banking application that is downloaded and installed on the phone customers have access to their accounts, the latest transactions, and can perform transfers, pay bills, and locate the nearest ATM or branch office. mFoundry's True Mobile Banking mimics the bank's web-based online banking. The application, which runs on any J2EE and Symbian phone, automatically downloads and displays the current balance when the user logs in, saving time, while smart data compression speeds up.