Monthly Archive for December, 2010

2011: The year for mobile banking

Research published recently by Forrester shows that mobile banking provision in Europe is gathering pace. This refers to all three of the main mobile banking services – mobile web, mobile app and text-based services.

According to its analysis, of the European banks offering mobile banking services:

• 76% offer SMS alerts
• 67% offer mobile banking web sites
• 64% offer iPhone apps

However, despite the fact that financial institutions have been making forays into mobile services for a number of years, there is still a relatively low consumer adoption. Forrester estimates that consumer adoption averages approximately six per cent in Europe, with Italy leading the pack at more than 10 per cent. Six per cent of UK consumers currently use mobile banking.

So, do we anticipate this changing in 2011?

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December 22, 2010 | Europe and MarketWatch | Closed

PayPal: Holiday Mobile Payments Up 300 Percent

We know that mobile sales have been performing well for PayPal’s parent company eBay, with the marketplace hitting record numbers for the shopping season. PayPal is announcing today that its payments business is also flourishing throughout the holiday shopping season, with a 300 percent increase in mobile payments from the official start of the shopping season (November 15) until now (December 15) compared to the same period last year.

PayPal previously reported a 27 percent increase in total payment volume on Black Friday 2010, compared to the previous year. Generally, PayPal saw an approximately 310 percent increase in mobile shopping on Black Friday.

Additionally, the company is announcing today that it has seen a 67 percentage increase in online charitable donations from the official start of the shopping season compared to last year.

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December 17, 2010 | MarketWatch and Payments | Closed

The three pillars of banking apps

Recently, we carried out YouGov research that revealed that one in four of generation Y (aged between 18 and 34) would hold their bank in higher regard if it offered mobile phone banking services.  Additionally, we polled the attendees at a recent breakfast briefing where a majority of the UK banks were represented – 36 per cent of respondents cited increasing customer satisfaction as their primary driver for providing mobile banking services. Thus, evidence suggests that banking apps have a key role to play for banks focused on their customers and their experience.

For the mobile user community, time is money … If mobile services are not robust and fast, there is a strong chance that apps will be dismissed. For example, if it takes a user longer to check their balance via a mobile device than say online or through a call centre, then there is little motivation to readily use this service.  For any app developer, therefore, one must consider ease of navigation, intuitive user interfaces and fast screen-to-screen load times to ensure repeated use and happy end users.

Tied with equal importance to the user experience is for the app to look and feel like a natural extension to any other channel or service provided by the bank.  Branding is more than just putting a logo into the top right hand corner of the screen – it’s around consistency, familiarity and ultimately driving trust.  Poor branding may lead to apprehensive users and a lack of trust in the app causing a decline in use and preference to other channels.

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December 17, 2010 | Industry and MarketWatch | Closed

The Race (For Marketshare) Is On: Commercial Launch of Mobile Banking in Haiti

And they’re off! Amid endless turmoil – earthquakes, cholera, and political unrest – Haitians finally have some good news. Two mobile banking platforms: TchoTcho by Digicel and T-Cash by Voilà have just launched for commercial use. Relief organizations, NGOs, and government agencies throughout the country have already begun to put the new technology to use. For an economy that has always been cash based, this is a huge leap forward. The public, most of which was previously excluded from banking, has responded enthusiastically.

As Nicholas Kristof writes in his New York Times column, mobile banking can potentially be a big breakthrough in addressing poverty. It can extend the reach of financial services and, most important, provide safe savings alternatives to the poor. Before the 2010 earthquake, just 10% of Haiti’s population had access to bank accounts. The country had only two bank branches for every 100,000 people. The expansion of banking through cell phones is highly strategic: 85% of Haitians already have access to a mobile phone. Subscribers throughout the country will be able to make money transfers and savings deposits, pay bills, handle payrolls, and engage in mobile commerce activities without ever setting foot in a bank. With Voilà in particular, users will be able to save up to 2,500 Haitian Gourdes, the equivalent of $62.50, without visiting a bank, and by early 2011 there will be thousands of affiliated merchants and deposit-and-withdrawal locations around the country.

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December 16, 2010 | International and MarketWatch | Closed

Emerging Payments Options Open Doors for Mobile

“Banks are not as nimble as some of the innovators in this space,” says Julie McNelley, a senior analyst at Aite Group LLC who covers banking and payments fraud. “And major growth in smart-phone use will speed P2P payments. The big challenge will be, ‘How do you impose greater controls on a user population when you are also trying to get them to adopt a new platform for payments?’”

Facebook, PayPal and companies like Bling Nation, an innovator in near-field-communications mobile payments, are expected to revolutionize payments over the next six to 12 months. But security and fraud will be a big concern. How will innovators in payments, as well as financial institutions, balance convenience and innovation with security? “That’s the million-dollar question, or the multimillion-dollar question,” McNelley says.

“Security and fraud will be a big concern in this channel,” she says. “We have also seen that malware is starting to target this channel; the Zeus trojan has impacted 12 Spanish banks in both an online and mobile coordinated attack. I think that as mobile commerce grows — as the mobile banking functionality increases — we are going to see a bigger and bigger target on mobile.”

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December 16, 2010 | Industry, MarketWatch and Payments | Closed

Why Your Smartphone Will Replace Your Wallet

The day when near field communication (NFC) will help replace plastic credit cards, coupons and loyalty program cards with a wave of a phone at a payment terminal has been long anticipated.

Wireless NFC technology enables devices, including mobile phones and payment terminals, to communicate with one another or read special tags. Its short-range signal, convenience and built-in security make NFC an apt choice for mobile payments. Its efficacy persuaded companies like MasterCard, American Express, and Visa to join the NFC Forum in 2004 shortly after it was founded to advance the use of the technology. Today, the possibility that this technology could replace a wallet full of plastic seems not only likely, but imminent.

Samsung’s Nexus S, the first NFC-enabled Android phone, will be on sale at Best Buy starting December 16; Nokia has announced that all of its Smartphones starting in 2011 will support NFC; and Apple recently hired an NFC expert. Jeff Miles, the director of mobile transactions worldwide at NXP Semiconductors, which co-invented NFC with Sony in 2002, says he expects more than 70 million NFC-capable handsets to be manufactured in 2011.

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December 16, 2010 | Industry and MarketWatch | Closed
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