Mobile Banking Updates - Aug 18

ATMmarketplace.com Releases Study on Mobile Banking
"Mobile banking is the technology and services that enable consumers to move funds between accounts, receive text messages about activity and pay bills via cell phone. In a world where smartphones are everywhere and people are increasingly accustomed to having instant access to data, it is one of the most significant changes occurring in the financial industry today."

First Tennessee Bank Introduces Mobile Banking to Put Convenience in the Palm of a Customer's Hand
"First Tennessee Bank, a subsidiary of First Horizon National Corp., is mobilizing to serve customers better with the launch of mobile banking. The bank now offers customers access to their accounts any time, any place through their mobile phones. Mobile banking is easy, convenient, secure and free. Customers can choose the connection that works best for them -- text, a mobile web browser or First Tennessee's downloadable app. Customers use the same ID and password as with online banking."

Bank-to-customer mobile messaging rates set to treble - Juniper
"The research house says moves by banks and vendors to expand the range of mobile banking messaging beyond alert functionality to encompass product and account application updates will boost bank-to-customer SMS volumes significantly.

Juniper analyst Howard Wilcox says: 'Our research found that messaging is a 'win-win' for banks. They can improve customer service significantly, whilst simultaneously eliminating the cost of servicing customer enquiries placed with call centres.'"

Compuware Gomez Launches New U.S. Retail Banking Web and Mobile Benchmarks
"Gomez, the web performance division of Compuware Corporation, today launched new U.S. Retail Banking Web and mobile industry benchmarks that provide the most comprehensive and unbiased view of the state of web and mobile site performance.

Gomez's U.S. Retail Banking web and mobile performance benchmarks--recognized as an industry standard for measuring web and mobile performance against key competitors and industry leaders--have been expanded to include metrics from more dimensions to provide a more comprehensive and insightful view of web and mobile performance."

Payment via Mobile Device? There's An App for That
"Virtually everybody carries a mobile phone these days. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could lighten our loads by using these wireless devices as virtual wallets to make payments at various retail locations?

Right, we’ve all by now heard about the prospects of mobile payments. But despite years of talk, this concept has yet to materialize in a significant way in the U.S. That may soon change, however, given new momentum in this space as important companies like Apple, eBay, MasterCard and Visa have announced, or delivered tools to help enable, new initiatives on this front."

Analysis - Mobile Banking Performance

There was some great information released while I was at Net.Finance last week; yet, it has received very little coverage.

The press release was titled, "Gomez and dotMobi Launch First Benchmarks That Measure Five Critical Dimensions of Success for Mobile Web Sites," but most of articles/blogs have focused on the data suggesting that, "mobile Web sites are 30 percent slower when compared to computer-based Web browsing."

More importantly...this release is the first public comparison of mobile banking websites, and here are the results:

"5 Bar Summary"
1) Bank of America
2) Chase
3) US Bank

My only criticism is that I'd like to see Gomez/dotMobi extend their survey to the Top 25 U.S. banks in order to give the other early adopters a chance to be evaluated.

To see the details of the study - click here.