"In an earnings call this week, Gary Norcross, president and CEO of FIS, was asked whether or not banks are going to charge customers for access to mobile apps or wallets. Several FIS clients 'are charging and actually doing quite well with adoption and penetration,' Norcross said, according to a transcript made public by Seeking Alpha.

'The consumer is going to push mobile and some of these new transformative mobile channels, and so the result of that is financial institutions, like a lot of things that they've done historically around charging for certain types of accounts or certain services, they're going to slowly move towards some type of a way to monetize that channel.'" Continue Reading

If you are visiting from Mobile Money & Banking let me say - Welcome.

On the other hand, if you have no idea what I'm talking about - I apologize - once you’re done here please check out the post I wrote today for Mobile Money & Banking titled "Mobile and Top 10 U.S. Banks."

Anyway, this weekend as I was doing some research I stumbled upon some very interesting tid-bits about the HSBC mobile service. As I dug into their disclosure I learned that they are not offering their service for free - at least not in the UK. As you can see they offer a "free weekly mini-statement" service via SMS. However, if you would like to utilize the "personalized" text message service it's going to run you 2.50 pounds/month (5ドル US).

Additionally, if you would prefer to sign up for the Rich UX solution (via Monilink) you'll incur the following charges:

* Balance inquiry - 20p (0ドル.41 US)
* Mini statement - 25p (0ドル.51 US)

That's right...a bank that has decided not to give away the premium product. Actually, let me rephrase, there is a promotion in place through 12/31/07 in which the service is free, but then the standard charges apply beginning in 2008. So, for all you mobile bankers out there - hold on to hope. There might be a way yet that we can generate some fee income with this solution.

Also interesting, as I'm sure you've noticed, is that all of the pricing is quoted in pounds. It seems that the service isn't promoted and possibly not even offered in the U.S. In fact, the only way I found the information was by performing a Google search. There's no link or mention on the U.S. version of HSBC.com.