Mobile Commerce in the NFL

I'm excited to report that the Mobile Banking blog is now beginning to reach a broader audience. The new industry - Professional Football - the other day I received an email from a new visitor Ed Reif, Corporate Sales Executive for the St. Louis Rams.

Ed and I had a chance to catch up, and it appears that the St. Louis Rams are blazing an unchartered mobile payments trail in the NFL. The idea "Rams Cash."

On his blog (HelloMyCash)Ed writes, "We will be giving away the RamsCash Mastercard (debit) as our premium item during a home game. Participating sponsors will be able to push coupons(RamsCash) to opt in users." Continue Reading >>

Mobile Banking - Dead or Alive?

It's been a tough PR week in the world of mobile banking. Here are just a few of the articles.

Mobile Banking: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Fastest and Safest Way to fund Terrorist

Consumers Are Apathetic About Mobile Banking

My only comment would be this - on a weekly basis I speak with numerous mobile banking practitioners and the numbers I hear are not only impressive, they are outright staggering. Top of mind...

* Bank of America with over 1 million active mobile banking clients
* Another bank (lets call them XYZ) enrolling 1,000 new users per day
* Another bank (lets call them QRS) reached their 9 month goal in 4 weeks
* And on, and on, and on...

In fact, the truth is that if all bankers could share their performance numbers the market for "what if" research papers would quickly fade away. Does anyone remember the point at which researchers stopped questioning ATMs, Debit Cards, and Online Banking?

P-to-P and Mobile Payments

Recently, I've been doing a lot of research around the topic of p-to-p and mobile payments, and last week I came across the article "MasterCard to Enable P-to-P Mobile Payments by Cell Phone" written by Orla O'Sullivan in Bank Systems & Technology.

For those new to the space Obopay has clearly positioned themselves as one of the front-runners by forging relationships with ATT, Verizon, Blackberry, Citi, and now Mastercard. However, if you're looking for other potential vendors here's a list of names that I've been compiling:

Mporia

BilltoMobile

MPAYY

Paybox

M-Pesa

C-SAM

PayforIt

CPNI

Tyfone

Affinity Mobile

ISTS

Kabira

mChek

Mobibucks

Gemalto

PayPal

Paymate

TextPayMe

VoicePay

Oxicash

Kushcash

Mocapay

Payter

Mi-Pay

Paypay

IBJ Covers Mobile Banking

I just wanted to take a minute to say "THANK YOU!!" to Scott Olson (Reporter), Robin Jerstad (Photographer) and the kind folks at the Indianapolis Business Journal (IBJ) for the article that was published this morning.

Click here to subscribe to the IBJ.

Mobile Banking Updates - July 23rd

The fall conference schedule is beginning to take shape. To the right I've added:
* Net.Finance 2008 (New York) October 28-29
* Finovate 2008 (New York) October 14
* Mobile Commerce (San Jose) September 17-18
* Plus, I know of at least two other events being held in NY - more to come...

Other News:
Mobile Money Ventures and Citibank Hong Kong
"Mobile Money Ventures LLC (MMV), a joint venture of Citi and SK Telecom, today announced its first customer implementation with Citibank Hong Kong. Citibank will use the MMV platform to deliver mobile financial services to its customers in Hong Kong in Q3 2008."

Pay on the Go - Consumers and Contactless Payment
"The Federal Trade Commission and the Technology Law and Public Policy Clinic at the University of Washington will host a Town Hall meeting on July 24, 2008, to explore the growth of contactless payment systems and their implications for consumer protection policy. This Town Hall, titled “Pay on the Go: Consumers and Contactless Payment“ follows up on the FTC‘s November 2006 hearings, “Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-ade,“ which examined key technological and business developments that will shape consumers‘ experiences over the next ten years."

American Express - Text Solution

It was just announced on the Payments News site that American Express has launched a mobile text solution.

Mobile Text Banking and Sessioning

On Friday I received an alert for an article titled "ANY THOUGHTS ON CHASE’S TEXT-2-WIN CAMPAIGN" posted on the mopocket.com site. The article is primarily focused on marketing, but covers an interesting challenge that we'll all face as we enter the world of mobile banking via text/SMS.

One of the author's primary concerns with the Chase campaign is that text messaging should be used to, "create conversations and interactions that in the end draw people toward your brand physically and/or digitally."

First, let me say that the author is absolutely correct - this would be ideal. Unfortunately, due to the inherent constraints of SMS technology, this is not an easy task. In fact, the truth is that while basic interactions via SMS are extraordinarily easy the more complex interactions (i.e. the ones used for dynamic conversations) involve "sessioning" and are much more challenging.

Confused?

Think of it this way. If a client sends a message to the the bank that says "hist" the response is simple - the bank returns the clients most recent transactions. However, what information should the bank send to the client if they receive the command "more?" The answer - the bank would have no idea unless they also know what information has been previously sent to the client.