Turkish Bank Lets Customers Build Their Own Apps

"Garanti Bank, Turkey's second-largest private bank, has introduced a mobile dashboard called iGaranti that lets users cherry pick the features of their mobile banking apps. The customization capability is similar to the way people pick which apps appear on their smartphones' home screens. 

Garanti partnered with Fjord, an Accenture Interactive-owned service design agency that also counts Citi as a client, to build iGaranti. The platform, rolled out in May, comes with a set of more than 15 apps, some of which are preloaded onto the dashboard, while others are added by the user." Continue Reading

NZ smartphone users ahead of Aussies in mobile banking uptake

"New Zealanders have been slower to take up smartphones than their Trans-Tasman counterparts-but once they get one, they are more likely to bank on them, the latest Digital Universe report from Roy Morgan Research shows. Just 38.6% of New Zealanders 14+ have a smartphone, compared with 59.7% of Australians 14+. But while Australia may be home to over eight times as many smartphone users overall, New Zealand's 1.4 million are more likely to use them for mobile banking activities.

In the first half of 2013, 33.5% of New Zealand's smartphone users did one or more banking and finance activity on their phone in an average four weeks, compared with 30.6% of Australian smartphone users." Continue Reading

A bank in a shipping container: CommBank's new mobile offering

"Mobile banking. It's a must-have in the modern world. Banks are piling in and consumers are lapping apping it up. But CommBank has given new meaning to the term with two fully-functioning portable banks built in shipping containers.

The thinking is that the pop-up banks can be deployed to areas affected by natural disasters and provide cash and insurance advice to families to help them rebuild, according to a report in The Daily Telegraph. It stemmed from CommBank's experiences during the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009." Continue Reading

Sub-Saharan Africa to have 160 M mobile broadband connections by 2016

"According to the report, mobile broadband connections are expected to increase almost four times from 2012 to 2016 to over 160 million in Sub-Saharan Africa, adding that mobile broadband has been driving financial inclusion through mobile banking and mobile money across the continent while supporting new ways of delivering healthcare in many countries.

The Broadband Commission for Digital Development is a joint initiative of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The task force which delivered the report was led by Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson." Continue Reading

FICO Asia Pacific Fraud Forum Calls Bankers' Attention to Growing Problem of Enterprise Fraud

"FICO (NYSE:FICO), the leading provider of analytics and decision management technology, alerted chiefs of leading Asian banks to the growing threat of enterprise fraud at its annual Fraud Forum in Manila this month. FICO urged the bankers to adopt the latest operational and analytic techniques to fight fraud across such emerging threat vectors as demand deposit accounts, mobile channels, application fraud and merchant fraud, as the region shifts to a post-EMV chip landscape.

The conference attracted nearly 30 of the leading banking fraud and risk executives from nine countries across Asia Pacific, who met for three days to address the growing sophistication of criminals who commit fraud, and the latest approaches to thwarting them." Continue Reading

Success of mobile payments dependent on significant infrastructure investment

"Financial services institutions must gain a better understanding of the mobile payments market, according to Ovum. New research from the global analysts indicates that there is still confusion about how to proceed in the rapidly shifting mobile payments space.

The research highlights that without a clear understanding of the relationship between mobile payments and the existing payments infrastructure, industry players will significantly miss out on the long-term potential of the market." Continue Reading

Geography, Collaboration and Innovation in Canada’s Mobile Payments Market

"MasterCard ranked Canada the second most well prepared market in the world for mobile payments adoption last year (Singapore was no. 1). A big reason for that is the density of mobile payments players located here in the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, where I am touring the ongoing development of the mobile payments ecosystem.

Simply put all the companies in the mobile payments industry here are neighbors, and seemingly friends. Toronto is the headquarters of all five of Canada’s big banks, as well as its three major telcos, Rogers, Bell and Telus. It is also the epicenter of Canada’s IT industry; Ontario is home to 50% of the industry’s GDP." Continue Reading