Mobile Banking Wallet and Payments

Mobile Banking: Apple Customers Hungry For iBank
"Personal banking with Apple? It could happen. With the growing trend toward mobile banking, Apple is already serving as a digital "bank branch" for many iPhone and iPad users. All the Cupertino-based company needs to do now is provide their own virtual teller-like services. And it looks like they might be doing just that."

Blaze Mobile Awarded Another Patent for NFC Payments
"Blaze Mobile, a leader in mobile payment and NFC solutions, has been awarded a notice of allowance for a new patent for mobile banking and payment transactions. This new patent covers any mobile banking transactions that comprise bill payment, peer-to-peer (P2P) funds transfer, funds transfer between bank accounts, between credit cards, and between bank accounts and credit cards."

Security concerns and lack of compelling offer 'holding back mobile wallets'
"Digital banking provider Intelligent Environments polled companies within the mobile banking and payments sector, including O2, Microsoft and Lloyds. A quarter of the companies were confident mobile banking would become a mainstream offer by next year, with a third opting for 2015. The survey said this summer's Olympic Games in London would be a means for businesses to showcase their mobile banking products."

SIM Card Tricksters Target Mobile Payments
"The criminal activity that targets mobile banking has not yet reached the levels of web banking, mostly because the volume of mobile banking to this point hasn't made it as attractive a target. But as mobile banking grows, that's starting to change — particularly since mobile banking is vulnerable to a wide variety of criminal threats. A new strain of crime that tricks users out of their subscriber identity module (SIM) cards has quickly emerged to threaten banks and other enablers of mobile payments such as telecoms."

PayPal announce new mobile banking device
"PayPal introduced its new "PayPal Here" device in San Francisco today, enabling small firms to transfer funds via credit card reader direct from their phone. Powered by card.io, PayPal Here is directly competing with rivals Square and Google Wallet."

10% of mobile users to pay bills using mobile phones by 2016: Report
"Mobile life styles will see about 80% of total mobile banking customers paying their bills through a mobile device by 2016, says Juniper Research. With the growing user acceptance of 'push' mobile banking and an exponential increase in smartphone adoption will drive users of transactional mobile banking services up from 185 million in 2011 to over 550 million in 2016, according to Juniper Research's 'Mobile Banking for Developed & Developing Markets' report."

Mobile Banking Updates - Jan 31

Bank Account Fraud? There's an App for That
"Mobile banking once entailed little beyond the ability to receive a text message with your account balance. But these days, it’s finally starting to live up to its name. Virtually every large bank and many regional banks and credit unions have rolled out applications that allow their clients to use a mobile phone for fund transfers, bill payments and even depositing checks.

But with the increasing popularity and convenience of mobile-banking apps comes a big caveat: the risk of downloading and installing a fraudulent application that could draw your account information and, potentially, any other data stored on your mobile device. In other words, the next generation of “phishing” scams is about to explode – and it has the potential to do much more damage than earlier versions."

5 Burning Questions: Bling Nation's Meyer Malka
"Meyer Malka sits down in the Briefing Room Hot Seat to answer five burning questions about the mobile platform wars and to reveal "what's next" for BlingNation."

Is Mobile Banking Safe? Redefining Mobile Security through App Verification
"I was told with optimism recently that there is an upswing expected in the use of mobile banking services in the year ahead for key markets within the US and EU. The trouble is however, this growth is hinged on one MAJOR hurdle which is security.

Just the other week for example, news spread from media sources like USAToday.com confirmed that Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) removed more than 50 mobile banking apps from its Android Market. These apps were just a few of the growing number of phishing apps that hackers are releasing into the financial services sector of mobile banking. The questions on the minds of many is, 'How could this happen and is my mobile banking app safe?'”

Active Blaze Mobile Users Access Digital Wallet a Staggering 9 Times Daily
"Blaze Mobile, a leading application for mobile banking, today announced that active Blaze Mobile Wallet users access their digital wallet an average of nine times each day and over 50% of the active users viewing their account balance and receipts. With consistent continued increase in Blaze Wallet downloads over the past year, the active access rate has continued with strong retention and usage rates. With access to over 8,000 financial institutions, Blaze Mobile offers convenience to customers who maintain multiple bank accounts and need access to review bank balances and view transaction history on the go."

The 30s crowd, not 20s, more digitally savvy about finances
"Wells Fargo recently surveyed 1,000 online banking customers and discovered that it's the 30-somethings who are more likely to use an online bank Web site, mobile banking and other Internet-related tools to manage their finances.

The 30-something folks are also using social networking, advanced photo and film technologies, and career networking sites more often than other respondents. With a lot of surveys showing how tech-savvy the younger generation is, it may seem surprising that it was not those from Gen Y but Gen Xers who are actually more hip to the use of online tools to manage their money. "

Versatile mobile to replace credit cards
"International IT company GFT Technologies AG (GFT) is developing future-orientated solutions for online payments. As payment with a mobile phone is increasingly becoming an alternative to the classic credit or debit cards, bank customers now have a wide range of payment options from which to choose. 'The mobile phone is the credit card of the future,' says GFT CEO, Ulrich Dietz. There has been a distinct rise in the use of mobile phones to make payments and take money out at cash machines, as well as to carry out banking transactions."

ClairMail Expands Optimized Mobile Web Support to Android and BlackBerry Devices
"ClairMail, Inc., the leader in mobile banking and payment solutions, today announced an update to the ClairMail mobile banking platform that extends its highly optimized mobile Web experience to Android and BlackBerry devices.
Based on its market leading SmartRendering technology, the ClairMail platform now supports a highly device-optimized version of the ClairMail mobile Web experience for BlackBerry and Android-based phones, such as the Curve™, Storm™, Pearl™, Motorola DROID and Google's Nexus One, with plans to support other devices as they are introduced to market. ClairMail has long provided the industry's leading mobile Web banking functionality on several hundred handsets, including the iPhone, with its proprietary device detection technology that delivers the best possible user experience based on each device's specific capability."

Mobile Banking Updates - Dec 28

Blackberry Users Left Helpless By Multiple Outage, Mobile Banking Comes To A Halt
"With over 55% of all mobile banking coming from smart phones (June 2009 – Yankee Group Research) and more consumers switching to Internet only banks (ING Direct, Ally). Consumers are leveraging mobile banking beyond ATM locator and balance transfer; today users are expediting bill payments and domestic remittances. Mobile devices such as the Blackberry and iPhone are leading the way for mobile banking."

Musings about Mobile Payments 2009 - Glenbrook Research Brief
"For the last several months, Glenbrook’s Carol Coye Benson has been interviewing a number of companies involved in mobile payments in the U.S. and Canada. You’ll find all of the analyses she’s written following those interviews on PaymentsViews.com. The companies included are Billing Revolution, Blaze Mobile, Bling Nation, Boku, CashEdge, First Data Corp., mFoundry, mPayy, Obopay, Payfone, Zong, and Zoompass."

AliPay Gears Up in Mobile Payment Field
"The daily transaction value of Alipay.com Co., Ltd. (AliPay) lately surpassed CNY 1.2 billion. After setting foot in the online payment field, AliPay President Polo Shao is leading his company heading toward the mobile payment market, seizing the highland of mobile Internet."

Blaze Mobile adds Tetherball’s loyalty system to the Blaze Wallet
"Blaze Mobile and Tetherball are to provide US consumers with the ability to both redeem mobile rewards and coupons and make purchases using their mobile phone.

Blaze Wallet users already have the option of using a Blaze Mobile Prepaid MasterCard PayPass sticker to make payments using their phone at the point-of-sale. Now they will be able to use the same sticker to both make payments and receive/redeem offers from retailers such as Dairy Queen that are already using Tetherball's contactless mobile marketing solution."

Wendy’s Debuts Mobile Coupons
"Wendy's International is taking its first steps into the world of mobile coupons with help from partner Options Media Group Holdings, a services provider for on-demand e-mail marketing, Brandweek reported.

Through the new campaign, customers in the Northeast can opt in for mobile coupons and ads, which arrive via text message, in return for discounts at select Wendy's locations."