Mobile Banking Updates - Feb 15

INSIDE Contactless Working With Qualcomm to Accelerate NFC Mobile Handset Rollouts
"'This alliance is significant not only for our MicroRead NFC solution, but for NFC technology and the mobile payments market in general. We believe the availability of these reference designs will provide a significant boost to the deployment of NFC-enabled 3G handsets worldwide,' said Rémy de Tonnac, chief executive officer of INSIDE Contactless. 'We look forward to creating these reference designs with Qualcomm and contributing our expertise and ideas to further the development of the emerging NFC ecosystem.'"

Symbian Foundation recruits more supporters
"The not-for-profit organisation - which has been set up to unify Symbian, S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) software; and administer, oversee and develop the resulting Symbian mobile OS in its altered open source state - has added a further 14 voices of support to its endeavour. These include Bank of America, HP, MySpace, Qualcomm and SanDisc."

UK government throws more money at banking (this time it's mobile)
"The International Development Secretary will set out how modern technology is transforming the way banks work in the 21st century and explain that this could benefit the developing world most, with people gaining access to financial services for the first time ever."

Co-Op Financial Services unveils mobile banking, contactless card payments solutions
"CO-OP Financial Services is now offering credit unions a turnkey entry into mobile banking and contactless card payments, according to a news release. CO-OP announced its mobile banking offering in Oct. 2008, with the selection of mFoundry's financial services platform to deliver mobile banking offerings to credit unions via a downloadable client application."

Mobile Banking: Fact or Fiction?
"It doesn't take much imagination to see how mobile phones can improve the way we manage money and make payments...This leads me to my next point: Haven't we been here before? Didn't customers already tell us they are not interested in mobile banking?"

Mobile money in tough times: still a good bet for operators?
"The global economy is sliding. The OECD predicts 2009 will be the worst year for the world economy since 1974. The mobile industry is already feeling the effects. Operator revenues grew by 5% in 2008, down nearly half from 2009, and are expected to soften further to 4.5% in 2009, according to Wireless Intelligence. And this is on top of the continual slide in ARPU (average revenue per user) which emerging market operators have seen for several years, as they pick up customers who are now disproportionately lower income. What does mean for mobile financial services?"