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Posts tagged mobile banking
Clickatell to Provide Global SMS Delivery Services for mFoundry’s Three Mode Mobile Banking Solution
Jun 2nd
Clickatell, the world’s leading global messaging company, today announced that Clickatell’s SMS messaging and gateway services will be used by mFoundry to enable Text Banking message delivery for mFoundry’s three-mode mBanking product. mFoundry offers the most complete solution in the market with integrated SMS, WAP, and mobile applications including native support for iPhone and iPod Touch. Clickatell’s carrier grade mobile messaging service, which currently supports over 8,300 customers, will provide Text Banking SMS messaging delivery for mFoundry’s mBanking product.
Jacob Jegher, senior analyst in Celent’s Banking Group, commented, “It is a very exciting time in mobile banking. Soon, people around the world will be using their mobile phone in place of their wallet. We’re already seeing many forms of text banking–including SMS receipts, mobile alerts, money transfers, balance checks, and more–in the US and especially in other regions where people have become accustomed to banking anywhere, anytime.
“SMS plays an essential role in delivering compelling mobile banking services across every segment of interest to financial institutions everywhere,” said Pieter de Villiers, CEO of Clickatell. “In our experience, mobile text banking sets a new standard of customer convenience and value by leveraging the popularity of text messaging to reach and improve the financial lives of the masses. We are proud to work with mFoundry, a company that continues to lead and guide this fast moving mobile banking market.”
“Clickatell was the only messaging company in the space that started specifically to deliver enterprise level solutions, which ensures banks the highest reliability and security as well as the lowest latency possible. In fact, they have the highest deliverability rate in the industry,” said mFoundry CEO and co-founder, Drew Sievers. “Clickatell offers access to more than twice the carrier connections of the nearest competitor, which gives our regional and community bank customers a higher level of coverage than any other text banking provider.”
Clickatell offers a complete enterprise messaging solution including a robust messaging platform and global messaging delivery. Clickatell was recently awarded “2009 Cool Vendor in Mobile and Wireless” by a leading analyst firm and was also acknowledged as “Best Value Product” from Mobile industry Review. Clickatell’s commitment to the financial services industry has resulted in major global wins with customers such as FNB, Standard Bank, Moneybookers, RSA, the Security Division of EMC, New Heights, and Fortis Micro Finance Banks, Metropolitan Insurance, S1 Corporation, Postilion, and more.
Clickatell Customer Wins Prestigious Model Bank Award
Jun 2nd
Clickatell, worldwide provider of mobile messaging solutions for banks and financial institutions, is pleased to announce that First National Bank (FNB) has won a prestigious 2009 Model Bank Award in Mobile Banking from Celent. FNB, one of South Africa’s “big four” banks, is a premier retail bank and an early pioneer and market share leader in providing mobile banking to millions. As a Clickatell customer since 2004, FNB has pioneered the use of SMS in many innovative mobile banking services which have been broadly adopted by more than 80% of their personal banking customers in South Africa. Celent is an international strategy consultancy and leading, global research and advisory firm specializing in financial services – with offices and client relationships across North America, Europe and Asia.
In early 2008, Celent launched its annual Model Bank 2009 award nomination process aimed at answering the question: “What would it look like for a bank to do everything right with today’s technology?” In winning this award, FNB and other award recipients are acknowledged as leading banks deploying best practices, which other financial services providers should follow. Clickatell was cited for its role in provisioning effective and innovative SMS technology and text messaging services allowing FNB to expand its footprint into Africa, which ultimately helped FNB win this esteemed award. The 2009 Model Bank Report highlighting winning bank case studies is available at www.Celent.com.
“Celent is pleased to present FNB with this award,” said Jacob Jegher, senior analyst in Celent’s banking group, and author of the report. “Among many excellent nominations this year, FNB was selected for their work in mobile banking in demonstrating how mobile text banking can be deployed and broadly adopted to prevent fraud, reduce operational costs, increase customer acquisition, loyalty and value.”
FNB’s SMS-based alert service – inContact™ — has proven to significantly decrease fraud by engaging customers in the process of real-time monitoring of account activity through text message and other mobile services. With more than 80% of its customers subscribed to inContact, FNB reports that since the mobile alert service has been launched and promoted, overall customer acquisition and retention rates have also grown significantly. Further, the bank reports that significant cost savings have also been achieved as demand for more expensive call center customer support activities via voice calls with live agents have been addressed by use of more effective, less expensive text banking communications.
“The Clickatell service helped us to create early consumer confidence in mobile banking across a number of countries we serve. Since our launch of inContact, we have seen the service become the most popular mobile banking service offered in the marketplace across the many markets we serve,” commented Len Pienaar, CEO Mobile Transact Solutions, FNB. “Our long-standing partnership with Clickatell to provide trusted, reliable SMS services helps us provide customers with anytime, anywhere mobile alerts so they can manage their finances. We are pleased to be honored with this prestigious award from Celent and look forward to continuing to provide innovative mobile banking solutions to our customers.”
“No longer a ‘nice to have,’ mobile banking has fast become a necessity when offering customers compelling banking options. Banks like FNB are proving the tremendous value proposition in the use of SMS in their mobile banking strategies as they strive to profitably retain, grow and better serve their customers, especially in the current economy,” said Pieter de Villiers, CEO of Clickatell. “Clickatell has been working with banks around the world for almost a decade and has the know-how and demonstrated track-record of success in delivering compelling mobile text banking services. Easy to implement and offer, Clickatell SMS Receipts™ provide our customers with immediate text banking alerts of account status and activity, fraud alerts and more.”
Mobile payment users to increase 70% in 2009 – report
May 28th
Research published by Gartner predicts the mobile payment industry will experience steady growth, as the number of mobile payment users worldwide will total 73.4 million in 2009, up 70.4 percent from 2008 when there were 43.1 million users.
Gartner predicts that the number of mobile payment users will reach more than 190 million in 2012, representing more than 3 percent of total mobile users worldwide and attaining a level at which it will be considered “mainstream.”
“Momentum in the mobile payment market gathered further in 2008 with a number of high-profile launches of mobile money transfer services in multiple markets, participation of major global institutions in near-field communication (NFC) payment trials, as well as new payment solutions entering the market,” said Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner. “However, at the same time, security concerns, an inadequate ‘ecosystem’ and undefined areas in banking regulations remain challenges for mobile payment.”
Gartner defines a mobile payment as paying for a product or service using mobile technology such as a short message service (SMS), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) and NFC. It includes transactions that use banking instruments such as cash, bank accounts or debit and credit cards, as well as noncarrier stored value accounts, such as travel cards, gift cards or Paypal. It does not include transactions that use mobile operators’ billing systems, such as purchase of mobile content or telebanking by mobile to the service center via an interactive voice response (IVR) system.
“Mobile payment has very different user cases and impact on developing markets to that of developed markets,” Ms. Shen said. “In developing markets, together with mobile banking, it allows people to use financial services in a more-efficient way — and sometimes the only way — at more-affordable costs, and can greatly improve standards of living. In developed markets, mobile is more of an extension of the existing payment infrastructure that allows people to deal with their financial needs on the go and in a timely fashion.”
This disparity leads to the presence of different products in different markets. For example, many services in the U.S. rely on a full browser and credit card, but this won’t work in developing markets, as many people don’t even have a bank account or bank card. On the other hand, Ms. Shen said USSD banking wouldn’t be acceptable in the U.S. as mobile operators have never made use of this for customer services and users may find it very awkward to work with.
In terms of both number of users and transaction volumes, Gartner expects Asia/Pacific and Japan to maintain a larger share of the market through 2012. While mobile payment penetration in Western Europe is expected to rise from 0.9 percent in 2009 to 2.5 percent in 2012, and from 1.7 percent to 3 percent in North America; penetration in Asia/Pacific and Japan will rise from 2 percent in 2009 to 3.8 percent in 2012. Mobile payment penetration in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Latin America is also expected to exceed 3 percent by 2012.
“The most profound impact of mobile banking and payment services is that they provide the nonbanking population with access to modern financial services, giving them tools to improve their living standards,” said Ms. Shen. “For mobile operators, mobile payment can help attract and retain users and generate new revenue streams. For financial institutions, mobile payment is an opportunity to reach users who may have been previously unreachable, due to a lack of retail infrastructure.”
Ms. Shen said that overall, the market will see fragmentation in both technologies and business models, meaning that services need to be adapted for individual markets — even when deployed with the same partners — and that long lead times will be needed for deployment. This, together with the time required for creating user awareness, leads Gartner to believe that mobile payment is at least three years away from entering the mainstream market.
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