What Tops Consumers' Mobile Banking Wish List?
"As plastic and digital transactions boom, the use of paper checks is in decline. Although checks still represent about 20 percent of all non-cash payments, the Federal Reserve processes less than a third of the checks it did 20 years ago. With fewer checks in circulation, you may be surprised to learn that the most desired improvement to mobile banking is … the ability to deposit checks."

Big data to drive banks' mobile wallet strategies - Finextra research
"Research from Finextra finds that banks around the world are looking to discounted offers and big data analytics to beat off the competition from telcos and tech start-ups as they battle for control of the consumer mobile wallet. For the research - conducted on behalf of Clear2Pay and NGData - Finextra surveyed more than 183 bankers on the key issues around the monetisation of mobile payments."

Itinerant customers embracing mobile banking faster than military banks expected
"Many banks treat mobile banking like an ancillary service channel, but it’s quickly becoming the main game for the highly-mobile customers of USAA and Australia’s Defence Bank. The head of customer strategy for military bank United Services Automobile Association (USAA) admits to being “a little scared” after recently watching mobile banking services usage rocket past the levels initially expected by the end of 2015 — but he relishes the challenge as USAA and contemporaries like Australia’s Defence Bank embrace new technologies to keep the personal touch."

Banking goes mobile
"Dan Brower fished a much awaited check from his mailbox but didn’t have time to swing by his bank’s branch. So the Kansas City resident fired up his 2-week-old iPhone, and with just a flick of his finger — disappointment. Commerce Bank’s mobile banking app doesn’t accept deposits."

Portland banking startup Simple raising more money, filing suggests
"Portland online banking startup Simple Finance Technology Corp. is raising more money, according to a regulatory filing this afternoon. The filing suggests Simple, as the company is known commercially, has raised 2ドル.3 million in new investment. But such filings often give an incomplete picture, and Simple said it will have more to say soon."

KeyBank Expands Mobile Capabilities for Commercial and Consumer Clients
"KeyBank is making banking more convenient for all clients - commercial and consumer - to manage money while on the move with an expanded suite of mobile banking services. 'We're seeing double-digit growth in our clients' use of consumer mobile banking, and we know our commercial clients have increasing interest in mobile,' said Matthew D. Lehman, head of KeyBank's Community Bank online and mobile banking. KeyBank's mobile banking use increased by 45 percent between 2011 and 2012."

Popular Community Bank Launches New iPad App in Latest Expansion of Mobile Banking Platform
"Popular Community Bank,* a subsidiary of Popular, Inc. and one of the nation’s premier community banks, expanded its “anywhere, anytime banking” program with the launch of its new application optimized for the iPad, available at the Apple iTunes store. The Popular Community Bank free iPad app compliments the bank’s iPhone® and Android™ apps, Business Mobile Banking and recently enhanced Internet banking. Through the iPad app customers can:"

With Mobile, Integration is Everything: Q&A With KeyBank's Dean Ilijasic
"In the scramble to meet customer demand for mobile banking, deploying a mobile channel can easily become a siloed exercise. Not so for Cleveland-based KeyBank (86ドル billion in total assets), where emphasis on the tight integration of all channels also drives mobile development. Bank Systems & Technology contributor Anne Rawland Gabriel spoke recently with Dean Ilijasic, senior vice president and director of consumer and small business innovation at Key, about the significance of mobile to the bank's multi-channel strategy and where it plans to go from here."

Capital One Deals Beamed Direct To Your Phone
"Capital One remains one of the most popular card issuers within Outlaw's credit card offers portal. Compare our favorite new credit cards from the bank this month, and apply online, right here. Aside from their customer service, I like the bank's willingness to jump on new technologies and trends before some of the more conservative, slow-moving banks do so. Their new mobile banking & deals app is a prime example of this..."

Upwardly Mobile
"When Tracey Weber first came to our office to shoot a video, a year ago, she proudly showed off the new iPad app her team had just finished developing. She was obviously getting things done despite the classic challenges of working in a large, matrixed organization. She brought along Andres Wolberg-Stok, a smart and articulate colleague who has also shown thought leadership in the industry - every mobile banker of the year needs a strong team behind her. Under Weber's watch, along with being one of the first banks to introduce an iPad app, Citi is among the first to have a Kindle app; it was also the first bank to team up with Google on its mobile wallet, which still has the potential to be a leading mobile payment solution."

Online Banking vs. Mobile Banking
"While PC-based online banking is not much older than a high school student, mobile banking is still in elementary school. With the proliferation of smartphones, however, online banking's younger sibling is quickly catching up to the slightly more established option. Banking through your PC's web browser offers a full menu of services. You can easily and conveniently schedule payments, transfer funds, add new payees, open new accounts, apply for loans, view current and past statements, and access information about specific checks that have been deposited. A PC or Mac allows you to view an extensive array of details and options, giving you full control of your accounts."

MoneyDesktop Signs Seventeen More Credit Unions and will Enhance Member Online Banking with PFM
"Credit unions nationwide are implementing PFM at an increasingly rapid pace as they recognize its critical role in online and mobile banking. Seventeen more credit unions are adding PFM to online banking and all have selected the platform provided by MoneyDesktop, a leader in PFM and an innovator that is redefining the way that people interact with their finances and with financial institutions. Today's announcement is another signal that account aggregation and PFM are must-have components to online and mobile banking."

Monetizing Mobile Check Deposit
"Winston-Salem, N.C.-based BB&T Corp. may be a super-regional, but the bank's acquisitive yet conservative deal-making has garnered it national notice in industry and analyst circles. BB&T has in the last 10 years more than doubled its assets to 174ドル.8 billion, making it one of the largest regionals in the world and the 13th largest bank in the U.S. Taking over the deposits and branches of failed Colonial BancGroup in 2009 from FDIC enabled BB&T to crack the U.S. top 10 in rankings of deposits; the bank has 124ドル.2 billion currently. It also boosted BB&T's presence in Alabama, Georgia and Florida, while giving the institution a foothold in Texas."

Mobile Security: Your #1 Threat
"Security concerns about mobile applications may be overblown, some experts say. Mobile users are more likely to compromise their mobile security via browsing and texting behavior than they are through the download of open-source apps.

But earlier this month, when researchers at Trusteer discovered a new Trojan aimed at hijacking banking credentials from users of Google's Android mobile device, concerns about open-source app vulnerabilities resurfaced, suggesting that companies such as Google should be doing more to enhance security."

KeyBank Expands Online Banking Capabilities With Enhanced Bill Pay Services
"KeyBank (NYSE: KEY) is making it easier to pay bills online with an enhanced offering of services that enable customers to send payments faster, avoid late fees and manage all of their payments more effectively. Today, fifty-two percent of Key's customer interactions take place through the web and mobile channels, and Key expects that number to grow. Based on usage and feedback from customers on the services they value most, Key is making significant investments to improve and expand its online banking capabilities as part of its goal to be the primary relationship bank for its customers."

Mobile banking a moving target, with First TN's deposit product latest example
"Here’s the thing about mobile banking: it just keeps on moving. Makes sense, right? But as banks try to offer customers — businesses as well as consumers — new ways to manage their money with mobile devices, the evolving technology and constant new pitches make what defines mobile banking a moving target."

Lloyds TSB improves mobile banking experience
"The improved Mobile Banking service is available across a wide range of smartphones and enables Internet Banking customers to access their money and manage their accounts using the most commonly used features of Internet Banking - and all on mobile optimised screens. Customers can access Mobile Banking through their smartphone's web browser - simply by logging on with their existing Internet Banking logon details."

JPMorgan Chase hires SVP for next generation payments
"JPMorgan Chase has hired Susan Ehrlich as senior vice president of next generation payments to help the firm create payments services and solutions for consumers, small businesses and retail merchants. Ehrlich will report to Jack Stephenson, head of mobile banking, E-Commerce and payments for Chase. Prior to JPMorgan, Ehrlich was president of Sears Financial Services where she managed the growth of an array of credit and payment vehicles."

Mobile Banking Growth Opportunity 'Substantial'
"Smartphones and tablets have already upended the consumer electronics industry (having reached near-equal penetration to e-readers and netbooks, according to Parks Associates). And they're expected to have a residual effect on the mobile banking world as well. According to a study from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies, more than half of smartphone and tablet owners use their devices for some form of mobile banking. At the same time, the 39% of people who plan to purchase one of the devices will use it for banking."

Mobile a key factor in consumer banking: study
"Mobile banking is quickly becoming the future of banking statements, and a new study found that mobile is now a factor when consumers are choosing banks. The study, which was conducted by financial consulting and research firm Mercatus LLC, reported that consumers are now using mobile platforms as a major consideration for banking. This study aligns with recent developments in financial banking."

FNB reports soaring African m-banking uptake
"The South Africa-based outfit says it subsidiaries have experienced massive take-up of m-banking services with year-on-year growth of 376% in Zambia, 277% in Botswana, 204% in Namibia and 473% in Swaziland. Nearly two thirds of its customers in Botswana now use mobile banking, nearly half of those in Namibia and Zambia and 11% in Swaziland."

Will E-Banking Close Your Bank Branch?
"Bank branches are being shuttered across the country as more consumers switch to electronic banking, since they tend to attract an older demographic, one more used to paper checks and deposit forms. But younger consumers are increasingly edging closer to mobile and online banking, with 30- and 40-somethings trailing closely behind. A study from Boston-based industry watcher Mercatus states that mobile banking platforms are a major consideration when choosing a bank."

Smart Strategies for Dumb Phones
"Yeah, yeah. Allison Landers knows all about smartphones and how quickly they've been proliferating. As an executive in Key Bank's online and mobile services division, Landers is more than aware that iPhones, Blackberrys and Androids have been the driving force behind the faster-than-expected rate of adoption for mobile financial services these past two years.

But since launching mobile banking services in 2009, Key has not exclusively catered to this subset of tech-savvy customers. The bank doesn't even offer an iPhone application yet, keeping most of its focus on less flashy offerings: an SMS text-based service and a website designed specifically for mobile phones. This lets Key reach more customers than it could through services intended just for those with smartphones."

Will banks avoid the mistake of DIY internet banking platforms and opt for shared mobile banking?
"Everybody is looking at the cloud right now. This might be a private cloud that sits within an organisation, the public cloud which harnesses software on the web or a community cloud where companies with similar needs share software that doesn't give them any differentiation. The third option is of particular interest to me because I recent interviewed a couple of senior executives at the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift). This is a messaging service currently used by over 8000 finance organisations. "

Bank of China Hong Kong launches BOCHK Mobile Banking services
"Bank of China Hong Kong, or BOCHK, has launched BOCHK Mobile Banking services, which allows customers to access the market information and manage their finance and investment. BOCHK Mobile Banking offers a banking service solutions, including securities trading, stock quote, fund transfer, credit card payment and account balance enquiry. Customers can seize investment opportunity with the market information via the mobile banking services."

KeyBank Launches Mobile Money from Fiserv to Entire Customer Base
"Fiserv, Inc., the leading global provider of financial services technology solutions, today announced that Cleveland, Ohio-based KeyBank, with assets of approximately 94ドル billion, is now providing customers with mobile banking services through Mobile Money(TM) from Fiserv. KeyBank is one of the first financial institutions in the U.S. to offer mobile banking to their entire customer base - it's available to those who use online banking as well as offline clients who use the branch channel."

Mobile Money Canada 2010, Canada's Only Mobile Banking, Payments, And Money Transfer Conference, Is Less Than 6 Weeks Away
"The second annual Mobile Money Canada Conference will be held on September 21st, 2010 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Mobile Money Canada is the only conference in Canada that is focused entirely on showcasing and building the country’s rapidly growing mobile money industry. Mobile Money Canada is hosted and organized by DonRiver Inc, a leading telecommunications and mobile financial services consulting firm."

Making sense of mobile payment
"There's been a lot of talk recently about mobile payment, from casual money transfers over PayPal mobile apps to using a mobile phone to physically kick-start a payment, as we observed during our field test with the Bling Nation tag.
These examples both fall under the category of mobile payments, but their technology differs as much as their goal."

New Boston Fed Paper: Mobile Payments in the US at Retail Point of Sale
"The Consumer Payments Research Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has released a new public policy discussion paper titled 'Mobile Payments in the United States at Retail Point of Sale: Current Market and Future Prospects' authored by Marianne Crowe, Marc Rysman, and Joanna Stavins."

Navy Federal Credit Union and EffectiveUI Unveil Navy Federal iPhone App
"Navy Federal Credit Union, the world's largest credit union, and EffectiveUI, an award-winning user experience (UX) design and development agency, today announced the release of a free mobile banking app for the iPhone and iPod touch®. The Navy Federal mobile app will make it easier for the organization's 3.4 million members to securely manage their accounts from wherever they may be in the world."

Sun National Bank Goes Mobile With mFoundry
"Sun National Bank announced today that it has partnered with mFoundry to launch Sun on Hand(TM), a state-of-the-art, fully integrated and comprehensive mobile banking solution for its customers. Featuring text messaging, mobile web and application technology, the program makes financial management possible anytime, anywhere for people with mobile phone access."

KeyBank Enhances, Expands Online and Bank Channel Capabilities
"KeyBank has enhanced its online banking capabilities and added mobile banking to its suite of banking solutions. Both moves reflect Key's ongoing efforts to provide clients with a breadth of options that meet their specific banking needs while delivering a superior overall client experience."

Bank of the West deploys online account opening and funding service from CashEdge
"US financial services provider Bank of the West has teamed up with account aggregation, funds transfer and online account opening company CashEdge to deploy the latter's online account opening and funding service for its retail banking customers."

Obopay Names Deepak Chandnani President
"Obopay, a leading mobile banking and payment provider, today announced the appointment of Deepak Chandnani as president of Obopay, Inc. The appointment is effective immediately and is a newly created position for Obopay."

MasterCard to Open Its Software for Application Development
"MasterCard Inc. is planning to open up its software format, enabling third-party programmers to develop payments applications for its network. The company said Tuesday that it would release open application programming interfaces for developers later this year. 'We feel this will unleash innovation within our industry, especially in the burgeoning areas of e-commerce and mobile payments,' Josh Peirez, MasterCard's chief innovation officer, said in a press release."

SMS Banking upgrades dominate recent development
"The May update of Mapa’s UK Mobile Banking and SMS Competitor Intelligence dashboards recorded notable new services as well as removed services in the UK market. Barclays have been the most active player in the mobile field the last months. Following the removal of SMS Banking highlighted in the Mapa update from February, the bank has now introduced their new and upgraded SMS Banking service. Customers sign up within Internet Banking and can register for regular balance alerts as well as triggered transaction alerts for a flat fee of £2 a month."

hyperWALLET Adds 10th Language to Global Payments Platform
"hyperWALLET Systems, a leading provider of global payment solutions, today announced the addition of Japanese and Malay language support to its global payments platform, web and mobile payment solutions. These two new languages bring the supported total to ten, providing additional linguistic options for organizations that wish to offer localized payment services to customers across international markets."

Key Mobile Banking
"Key's Mobile Banking is a fast, convenient, and secure way to access your KeyBank accounts anytime, anywhere, using your iPhone® or BlackBerry® smartphone."

Carol Realini’s thoughts on the Obopay iPhone app launch
"1) Why did Obopay choose to launch an iPhone application?
Obopay loves smart phones – since they are such great platforms to deliver a rich, colorful experience. We have been a long time supporter of BlackBerry, and now with this release we add a state-of-the-art iPhone application. "

This article contains the notes from my interview with Adam Clark (CEO - MCOM) and is very timely with the announcement this morning that Key Bank has selected Fiserv and MCOM as their mobile banking provider. To learn more about Adam Clark click here to visit the MCOM website.

Q: What’s your differentiator? What sets your mobile banking solution apart from the competition?

A: Completeness and Certainty are the differentiators that set MCOM apart. Certainty comes in the form for history. MCOM has strong execution and years of experience at providing mobile banking solutions. Completeness in providing all access modes and experience in mobile payments through international deployments. Plus, a strong relationship with a large organization such as Fiserv.

MCOM also has the greatest market reach by providing solutions for non-online banking customers. This allows the institution to obtain higher adoption, more usage, and facilitates the migration of clients away from high-cost channels. In the end, it’s all about the FI knowing that they’re working with a partner that has driven adoption and ROI. The days of being first or doing something just because it’s sexy are over. Today it’s all about real returns.

Q: Who are your key clients?

A: Our key clients include:
• Key Bank
• Washington Mutual/Chase
• Delta Community Credit Union
• Bangkok Bank Ltd. (#1 in Southeast Asia)
• Australia
ANZ, Westpac, National Bank, GE Money, Western Union

Q: Who are you key partners?

A: Our key partners are:
• Fiserv
• Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (India)
• Mesiniaga (Malaysia)
• First Data (Australia)
• Fawry (Egypt)
• Microsoft
• Western Union

Q: Budget season is just around the corner, and the #1 question bankers want to ask is – What’s it going to cost me?

A: The expense of a mobile banking solution is across the spectrum from a few dollars per user a year up to several dollars per user a month. Yet, you don’t want to work with a cheap vendor that’s still testing and trying to figure out the bugs in their system.

The key is to look for a vendor that will help you achieve a positive ROI by the second year. You want reasonable pricing and a vendor that’s so confident in their solution that they’re willing to take a risk on your adoption.

Q: What components of your ROI model have begun to materialize?

A: Our data reveals that 70% of mobile transactions are “Net New” which means that we’re cannibalizing 30% of transactions that would have gone to the IVR, CSC, or ATM. In fact, one of our customers did a retention study on Gen Y consumers (18-24 year olds) and found that retention went from 85% (15% churn) to 93%. If you consider the average cost of customer acquisition and consumer profitability, that is a massive bottom line impact. >> Read Full White Paper

Q: How many active users do you have across all FI’s?

A: We can’t disclose the total number of active mobile banking users, but here’s some information we can provide. It’s essentially a given that you’ll hit 2-3% adoption without any effort and 5% adoption will require very little effort. In contrast, an institution with strong resources and sustained effort can reasonably achieve 7-9% in just the first year.

A good adoption estimate is 5% a year for 5 years totaling 25%. But remember it’s not how much money you spend on marketing. It’s about the effort put behind the solution. The strong performers focus on usage behaviors and data to boost growth.


Q: What’s your highest client adoption %

A: One client has achieved 25% adoption of active online banking users in just 3 months.

Q: What’s your lowest client adoption %

A: One client that considered the project complete at launch has only achieved 2-3%.

Q: What do the demographics of your users look like?

A: It’s really based on demographics, devices and many other factors. The best way to begin is to figure out what you want to achieve, and then to put in a solution that appeals to that segment. For instance:
• Notoriety – iPhone and Android
• Youth Focus - iPhone and SMS
• Small Business – Browser or Application

Ideally, you need a mobile banking solution that appeals to a broad set of your customer base. You should deploy an enterprise solution that allows customers to use any phone and any method they prefer. The MCOM platform allows you to customize the solution for the device, because you don’t want to give a Blackberry experience to an iPhone User or vice versa.

Q: What do the usage patterns look like? Balance, History, Transfers, BP, Locator?

A: We see the usual patterns of most value from balance and transaction information, followed by threshold and scheduled alerts. What is interesting in terms of the latest data is that transfers (about 20% of users), bill payments (about 20% of users) and P2P payments (just under 10% of users) are all growing disproportionately to adoption. To me this means that consumers are getting comfortable with the mobile channel and starting to adopt ‘riskier’ transactions. We saw this with online banking, so it is no surprise.

Q: What security elements are incorporated into your application?

A: MCOM believes that security is incredibly important and focuses on authentication, encryption, and educating the clients. And it’s important to note that perception is just as important. You need a product that gives the client the feeling of comfort and security, and that’s why MCOM is moving to a system where customers will be provided with a choice of security.

There will be global rules that the banks set, and then consumer based rules within those constraints. For example Bank XYZ will set a threshold of 500ドル/day yet the client could specify that anything over 200ドル requires a second factor of authentication.

It’s a constant trade off between usability and security, and we believe that consumers need to be involved with that decision. An institution can’t force everyone to use voice or finger id, because some clients will just take their business elsewhere.

Q: How likely are biometrics to become a component?

A: Today MCOM is working on biometrics security for an international deployment. One benefit of working with MCOM is that you’ll receive mobile banking enhancements before other FIs because MCOM is building them for other countries that are further along.

Q: How has the iPhone changed your approach to the business?

A: In the mobile payments space the iPhone has changed the balance of power in the industry. The carriers used to be very assertive, but the iPhone and the App store were able to rapidly erode that control.

In the mobile banking space the iPhone improved the maturity in the U.S. market. The mainstream mobile user has evolved from being primarily a voice user to voice, text, web, applications and much more. The iPhone has grown adoption.

Q: What has been your biggest surprise/lesson-learned over the last couple of years?

A: There haven’t been many surprises. MCOM came from overseas and the market has moved relatively slowly.

Q: What big industry development should we expect within the next 12 months?

A: The next 12 months in the U.S. will be about ”Getting it Right.” The large, mid and small tier banks will move beyond trial/testing into sustainable and profitable execution. We will see an increase in adoption and will see some dabbling in P2P and stickers, but not much in NFC except some closed loop launches.

In the international space the focus will be around banking the unbanked. Plus, significant volumes of payments and advancement of P2P, Prepaid, and TopUp. These markets will also witness earlier strides toward NFC.

Q: What can banks do a better job of to facilitate adoption?

A: It’s fundamental that someone at the FI wakes up caring that they have more users today than they did yesterday. Institutions need someone that takes ownership and is paid and incented to drive adoption and growth.

Next, the product owner needs the resources to put the strategy in effect. This effort should focus on profitable segments and should be executed in a targeted and cost effective manner. This does not require spending millions of dollars.

Focus on mining the data. Make offers based on successful scenarios
1) Try to move people that frequent ATMs for a balance to mobile banking
2) Someone calls into the CSC for a balance. The agent should be able to suggest and enroll the client for mobile banking on the spot.

Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ: FISV), the leading global provider of financial services technology solutions, announced today that Cleveland-based KeyBank, with assets of approximately 98ドル billion, has chosen Mobile MoneySM from Fiserv to support the bank’s strategic growth plans for the mobile channel. A primary factor in the bank’s selection of Fiserv was the company’s ability to deliver a full range of customer-focused, innovative mobile solutions which will complement and easily integrate with the bank’s other services and infrastructures. >> Continue Reading

This year I'm being very selective with my travel but one event I'll definitely be participating in is Net.Finance 2009.

The location for this years event is the JW Marriott Resort, Las Vegas

The agenda is topic-notch including a mobile banking panel discussion on Day 2 featuring:
Doug Brown (SVP - Bank of America)
Ginger Schmeltzer (SVP - SunTrust)
and myself titled "In the Hot Seat."

Other speakers include:
Steven Kietz (CEO - Mobile Money Ventures)
Ilieva Ageenko (SVP - Wachovia)
Mark Middlebrook (SVP - City National Bank)
Helen Loh (VP - Charles Schwab)
Jim Van Dyke (President & Founder - Javelin)
Mickey Mencin (VP - Key Bank)
Matt Wilcox (VP - Zions Bank)

Register to attend today>>