Mobile Banking Updates - Sept 26

U.S. Mobile Payment Use Still Years Away, MasterCard Exec Says
"U.S. consumers are still at least "a couple of years" away from widely using their smartphones to make payments, despite technology that is already available, a MasterCard Inc senior executive told Reuters Friday.
Major U.S. banks, mobile phone companies and credit card processing networks are all vying to dominate the emerging U.S. market for smartphone payments. MasterCard and its rival processing networks, including Visa Inc and Discover Financial Services, are all intensifying their tests of technology that will allow consumers to pay for goods or services with their mobile phones."

Mobile Money Wins the Social and Economic Innovation Award 2010
"Based on the success of mobile money-transfer services in Kenya and other developing countries, The Economist has announced that Nick Hughes and Susie Lonie will jointly receive the Social and Economic award at its forthcoming Innovation Awards ceremony for their outstanding contributions in this field. Nick Hughes (Signal Point Partners) and Susie Lonie (Vodacom South Africa) started a mobile money initiative in Kenya in 2005 called M-PESA, which is a joint venture between Safaricom, the leading mobile telecommunications company in Kenya, and Vodafone."

5 questions about mobile banking with Hope Berman Levin
"When did U.S. Bank first provide mobile banking to its customers and what percentage of them use the service? We introduced mobile banking to our customers in July of 2008. It’s growing rapidly; specific numbers are proprietary. We have an app for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry as well as many other smart phones. Our largest population of mobile banking users use the iPhone."

Too Many Cooks in Mobile
"We could learn a few things about banking and payments security from some unsuspected places. Case in point: Africa, where the Central Bank has already spearheaded an effort to set guidelines for mobile financial transactions. Mobile banking and payments are rapidly accelerating the proliferation of banking services in Africa, a continent with relatively few banking branches. In fact, mobile banking and payments are seen as critical to the maturation of the Africa Union's economic growth and stability."

Visa powers contactless mobile payments for NY/NJ mass transit
"'Visa’s working to bring mobile contactless payments to consumers in the U.S. by transforming mobile phones with a microSD slot into Visa mobile payment devices,' said Dave Wentker, San Francisco-based head of mobile contactless payments at Visa.

'The mass transit trial in New York allows Visa and the transit agencies to test Visa payWave-enabled mobile phones and cards as a way for mass transit riders to pay for subway, train and bus fares,' he said. 'For transit agencies, this pilot allows them to reduce the cash handling costs and ticket distribution, allowing them to focus on their core business of getting people where they need to go.'"

Western Union offers mobile money transfers
"Mobile banking and mobile payments are just two kinds of financial applications coming on cell phones. Western Union has now unveiled mobile money transfers in Canada–a move indicating that despite security worries, mobile financial transactions are going to be common in developed economies. Western Union and EnStream want to change the paradigm, maybe even democratize the way money is sent and received, a company press release said."

M-Com Launches Another Person-to-Person Service - Customers Experience Industry-Leading Adoption of P2P Payments
"'Our customers across M-Com's commercial P2P deployments are seeing significant demand growth,' comments M-Com CEO, Adam Clark. 'A significant proportion of registered mobile bankers are already active and regular mobile P2P payers, with an average transaction value of about $240. About 40% of those are informal and personal in nature, 40% are for payments to small merchants such as plumbers, and the rest are for payments of goods exchanged by individuals through mechanisms such as eBay. Better still, both transaction volumes and transaction value are growing disproportionately faster than the general adoption of mobile banking services.'"

CashEdge Launches Popmoney™ for Small Business - First Email and Mobile Payments Service Designed for Online & Mobile Banking Small Business Customers
"CashEdge, Inc., the leading provider of Intelligent Money Movement™ services, announced today the launch of Popmoney™ for Small Business, the first electronic invoice and payment solution designed specifically for small business customers of financial institutions. Popmoney for Small Business provides businesses with the unique capability to pay vendors and employees electronically using only an email or mobile number. They may also pay using an account number."