Despite the significant challenges faced by the UK’s banking sector over the last decade, there has been a dramatic evolution in the customer experience following the introduction of online, telephone and mobile banking. While the branch remains an important channel, especially for older customers, mobile technology is rapidly redefining how customers interact with their banks.
Apple may have lined up the chief executives of Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase to laud the launch of Apple Pay, but reaction from the wider industry was more muted – disappointed, even.
Telecoms company Millicom has stepped up its push to gain ground for its mobile money service in the Tanzania as competition heats up between operators in the region
With the penetration of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets constantly growing, attention is increasingly turning to mobile marketing, mobile commerce and mobile payments. It is still the case, however, that these trends are largely played out in specialised media, and do not influence the actual behaviour of consumers. This is especially true for mobile payments, with consumers very sceptical about this concept
A new app-based social network that uses gamification concepts to train traders and help them to hone their skills has been launched by a former Deutsche Bank trader.
Western Union has expanded its account-to-account money transfer service to cover Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
FinTech developers, designers and entrepreneurs are being challenged to a 36-hour development tournament in the days leading up to this year’s of the Money20/20 event in Las Vegas in November.
Mobile payments provider LoopPay has secured funding from global payments firm Visa as it pioneers a technology that capitalises on the installed base of magnetic stripe-reader point-of-sale systems rather than NFC, which is the current favourite in mobile payment circles.
Italian financial infrastructure company SIA has inked a deal with mobile commerce provider Swish Payments to support mobile payments in Africa and Europe. The two firms claim the deal will help to bring more efficient forms of payment to both regions.
Standard Chartered has launched a mobile wallet in the Philippines through a partnership with Globe Telecom, in a deal that will tap into demand for mobile money in one of the world’s strongest remittances markets.
The mobile wallet is having a transformative effect on people’s lives in developing countries, bringing safer, faster, easier financial services to the people who need it most
Mobile NFC services continued to expand in 2013 but the big question is, will this be amplified or disrupted by the introduction of host-based card emulation (HCE) into mainstream operating systems?
Milan-based payment processing specialist SIA says that a migration of its systems to the Red Hat Linux environment has led to a 270% reduction in processing times.
David Sear, the former chief executive of the Weve mobile network e-commerce joint venture, has been appointed as group chief commercial officer at Skrill Group.
Analyst firm Juniper Research reckons more people will be using mobile apps for banking than web-based options by 2019, as the 800 million people who used their phones for banking more than doubles to 1.75 billion in five years.
Banks are continuing to spend money on branches, but they are dramatically changing their role to become centres for sale-oriented advice rather than service-oriented transactions, driven by the rapid growth of digital banking.
The annual transaction value of online, mobile and contactless payments will nearly double over the next four years, reaching $4.7 trillion by 2019, up from just over $2.5 trillion this year, with contactless payments primarily driven by card purchases rather than mobile.
Standard Chartered Bank and Singaporean incumbent telecoms operator SingTel have launched a new mobile money service called Dash, in which customers can move money onto their mobile device and then use it to make payments without ever coming into a bank branch.
Citi has chosen the ‘headliner’ finalists for its mobile innovation competition in Latin America, the Mobile Challenge LatAm 2014, which aims to bring together individuals and companies with innovative ideas to create applications for Citi’s Latin America mobile banking platform.
Kazakhstan’s Eurasian Bank has launched a mobile banking service which offers basic mobile banking features to Kazakh, Russian and English=speaking customers.
The speed at which the mobile market evolves is staggering. Just as we started to look at mobile first, where banks need to align their services and strategies to cater for mobile before desktop or other traditional channels, the notion of mobile-only is now creeping to the fore.
More than two years after the UK’s FSA introduced rules on mobile call recording for financial institutions, more than half of those affected still have not rolled out a solution – leaving many at risk of enforcement action, according to a new report by analyst firm Ovum and computer telephony specialist Teleware.
Citi is hosting a major new mobile innovation competition in Latin America. Called the Mobile Challenge LatAm 2014, the competition aims to bring together individuals and companies with innovative ideas to create applications for Citi’s Latin America mobile banking platform.
HSBC has installed free Wi-Fi in 650 of its UK branches, bringing the bank into line with Barclays, which introduced free Wi-Fi in February 2013. Both banks signed deals with BT to provide the connectivity, which is managed by BT as a white label service.
As contactless and mobile payment methods continue to grow, building societies and other financial institutions need to avoid being complacent about new technology, according to senior delegates speaking at the BSA annual conference in Manchester this week.
Confusion and concern over security is cited over and over again as the biggest barrier to widespread consumer uptake of mobile payments. And no wonder – confidence in the protection of sensitive cardholder data lies at the heart of trust in this technology. An EMV card as a physical asset is cryptographically secure. How can we emulate this security with something that is virtual?
Payment services provider Adyen has reported that one in five payments made on its network are now being made using a mobile device – a finding that reflects the rise of mobile payments worldwide, according to the firm.
Banks must take note of the way that technology is changing how customers interact with the world around them and develop products and services that address their needs rather than the banks’.
Why are different parts of Africa experiencing widely different levels of success with mobile banking, despite years of experience in Kenya? Panellists at the IPS conference in London offered a range of explanations
Partnerships and alliances with innovative digital entrepreneurs will allow the large incumbent banks to adapt and thrive in the new economic ecosystems being created by the mobile and digital revolutions currently changing the industry.
The banking industry is complex by its nature but banks and bankers should look up from their budgets, listen to their customers, stop whining about regulations and collaborate on industry issues.
Mobile money service M-Pesa has launched in Romania, bringing an idea hugely successful in Kenya to a European Union member state for the first time.
UK consumers have doubled the amount of transactions they make on their mobile phones over the last year, according to new figures released by the BBA.
Orange Business Services and technology infrastructure provider SIA have done a deal aimed at encouraging European banks and merchants to manage more payments via mobile point of sale terminals.
Brazilian banking group Bradesco is planning to roll out NFC mobile payments across Brazil by summer 2014, through a partnership with mobile operator Claro and technology provider Giesecke & Devrient.
While established banks struggle with their legacy systems, smaller players and new entrants are quickly adopting new technologies – but there are some trends in digital banking that are being slowly adopted by the banking industry as a whole.
Mobility has risen to such a level of importance that many people believe it deserves its own C-level position to advance and align mobility strategy throughout the enterprise. In no other industry is this more pressing than in banking where financial institutions are increasingly using mobile apps to set themselves apart from their rivals.
The mobile payments system planned by the UK Payments Council will be branded Paym. The Council says that it will announce the go-live date next month and final testing is on track.
Mobile payment isn’t about reinventing the wheel – it’s about making merchants and customers’ lives better by establishing a relationship built on knowledge and trust, according to mobile payments platform Znap.
Poland’s Getin Bank has implemented biometric signature verification in a roll-out of unstaffed remote branches using Virtual Teller Machines under its Getin Point brand. The technology allows customers to carry out banking tasks that require a signature without having to go to a traditional branch.
