Tuesday, February 17, 2009

MMA Publishes Mobile Banking Overview - 160 Characters

http://www.160characters.org/news.php?action=view&nid=2762

Submitted by Mike Grenville on Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:58

A free overview of the marketing opportunities represented by the mobile channel for the financial sector has been published by the Mobile Marketing Association.

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has published a Mobile Banking Overview; an educational resource designed to provide analysis of the marketing opportunities and attributes that the mobile channel represents for the financial sector.

Subjects include market size, consumer-focused mobile banking products and services, and the mobile media channels available to banks and other financial institutions. It also provides considerations for optimizing mobile banking communications and campaign effectiveness within each channel.

“As mobile commerce becomes more secure, we will see a paradigm shift in the way people do their banking,” said Sean Moshir, CEO of CellTrust and Mobile Banking Sub-Committee Co-Chair at the MMA. “We believe that mobile banking will parallel the Internet era in many aspects, leading consumers and financial institutions alike to become more comfortable with mobile transactions. ”

The overview is the result of ongoing member collaboration with the MMA North America Mobile Banking Sub-Committee of the MMA Global Mobile Commerce Committee. The Mobile Banking Overview includes participation from the following MMA Mobile Banking sub-Committee member companies: Acuity Mobile, AT&T Mobility, CellTrust Corporation, Fidelity Investments, Silverback Media, Sprint, VeriSign, Inc., Verizon Wireless, Virgin Mobile, USA and Washington State Employees Credit Union.

“The improved user experience across handsets and networks and better browsing capabilities associated with the mobile web have resulted in significant growth in the mobile banking market over the past several years,” said new MMA President and CEO Mike Wehrs. “Many financial institutions already offer some form of mobile services for their customers, and the MMA is seeing mobile usage rise for personal banking. The Mobile Banking Overview is an important step towards the formulation of guidelines around the service, and a great addition to existing MMA educational resources.”

Mobile is at around the point that internet banking is when it took off around 1998, and is set for rapid take up according to the report. 30% of US households will bank using their mobile in 2010 according to Celent.

In spite of the character limitation, SMS is seen by the report as a key tool to drive the take up of mobile financial services. Benefits of SMS noted by the report include that it works across all networks, is easy to use by consumers, can be used straight away without needing a special phone or installing software, and enables the bank to provide real time financial information to customers.

The report also considers the issues around secure SMS when it is combined with a handset client. While noting that this can increase not only security but the amount of information that can be provided to the customer, the number of handsets able to take advantage becomes severly restricted and there is likely to be an increase in suctomer service and support issues.

For a bank in particular there are security issues to consider and the report touches on some of the strengths and vulnerabilities of SMS and the GSM network for transmission of confidential data.

The free 13 page MMA Mobile Banking Overview can be downloaded from
www.mmaglobal.com/mbankingoverview.pdf