FSTC for Mobile Banking and Payments

I received word last week that there's a new project in development at FSTC (Financial Services Technology Consortium). The initiative is titled "Mobile Payments and Banking - Identify and document technology-enabled opportunities for banks in the mobile arena."

The project is being sponsored by
* TCH (The Clearing House)
* FED (Federal Reserve Banks)
* ABA (American Banker’s Association)
The proposal continues to say, "FSTC will also gain significant expertise from PaymentsNation, BITS (Financial Services Round Table) and NACHA (National Automated Clearing House Association)."

The background for the project reads as follows, "As with prior network technology evolutions, the mobile channel is evolving even as banks attempt to utilize it. This situation has created issues for early adopter banks, as well as questions for the industry about how to structure their relationships with the new players brought to the financial services table by the promise of opportunities in the mobile arena. These questions span the entire gamut of network dynamics – regulatory, legal, technology, business models, consumer adoption and financial. As in earlier network evolutions, each of these dynamics will have to be thoroughly analyzed and understood by the banking industry in order to move toward an efficient, effective utilization of this new technology. There are lessons to be learned from the deregulation of the monopoly AT&T network in the 1980’s and in the evolution of the Internet in the late 1990’s." Click here to access the project proposal >>