People who bank with Lloyds TSB will be able to find out their balance by sending a text message, the company has announced, reports The Telegraph.
The bank's "balance on demand" service, which the bank says is Britain's first, goes live today. To use it, customers text BAL and the last four digits of their current account to a special short phone number.
They then receive a text with their latest balance, as well as details of their last six transactions. The texts can be requested "whenever and wherever they are needed", Lloyds said, and are sent "instantly".
The mobile banking pack also allows customers to transfer money between accounts and set up text alerts to tell them, for example, if their balance has fallen below a certain level. However, these services need to be set up through online banking or a special application that is downloaded to the phone.
According to Cellular News, a financial services technology group is developing standards for making secure mobile payment transactions.
The project is an effort of the Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC), an industry group comprising banks, technology vendors, researchers and government organizations, which develops technology standards for the financial services sector.
The goal of the project is to develop standards and processes so that banking customers are able to securely pay a merchant or another bank customer using their phone, no matter what mobile device or carrier they use.
The market of mobile financial services to poor people in emerging markets will surge from nothing to $5 billion in 2012, U.S.-based microfinance policy and research center CGAP said on Monday. Reuters reports.
The market began in early 2007 with a launch of Safaricom's M-PESA in Kenya, which has attracted 6.5 million customers, or one in six Kenyans.
Operators in several emerging countries have followed, and by end-2009 CGAP expects more than 120 mobile money implementations in developing markets.
The new estimates are part of GCAP's joint study with industry group GSMA on estimating the size of mobile financial markets. The study is due to be published next week at the Mobile Money Summit in Barcelona.
Pickens said on top of the $5 billion, telecoms operators could save up to $2 billion from lower customer turnover, and the takeup of financial services would lift by $1.10 their average monthly revenue per user (ARPU).
Would you be comfortable using your phone to purchase big-ticket items, such as round-trip tickets to Tokyo? Or front row seats at a Beyoncé concert? Billing Revolution, a mobile payment start-up based in Seattle, thinks so. Bits Blog reports.
Generally, purchases made on mobile phones are charged to cellphone bills, with mobile carriers taking a share of the revenue. Billing Revolution processes mobile credit card payments — not unlike the one-click buying system used by Amazon — for companies such as GameLoft and ESPN.
Japan's top mobile telephone operator NTT DoCoMo said Wednesday it aimed to launch a new service enabling cash transfers simply by entering the recipient's cellphone number. Reuters reports.
After applying online, users would be able to send money to another DoCoMo subscriber's bank account even if they do not know their bank details. The amount will be charged to the sender's phone bill, said company spokesman Taishi Hoshino. "We hope to begin the service as early as this summer," he said.
Transfers are expected to be limited to about 30,000 yen (316 dollars) a month for each subscriber, he said. Further details such as DoCoMo's banking partner and the service charge will be decided soon.
MasterCard has announced that its Money Send service will go live later this month in the U.S., allowing customers to send and receive funds by text messages, the mobile browser, mobile apps, or over the internet from a PC. MocoNews reports.
The service is already available in 17 other countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, India, and the Philippines.
Last week, Saul Hansell of NY Times Bits blog described how you can make your cellphone work like a credit card by applying a sticker to the back. The sticker, equipped with a radio frequency identification, or R.F.I.D., tag lets you wave the phone over a terminal to make a purchase.
This week Hansell explains how Visa's cellphone payment system is more than sticker-thin. The service is currently available only in Malaysia, but it will be expanded to other countries in coming years.
Like some phone payment schemes already used in Japan, the Visa service uses a chip on the phone to communicate with a payment terminal. But the latest version is based on a global standard for phones and telephones called near field communications.
There are signs the mobile payments market is really taking off at last with Nokia announcing a substantial investment in service provider Obopay today, reports the FT.
The amount, understood to be in the region of $70m, is being put in by Nokia itself rather than its venture arm and gives it a minority stake in the Silicon Valley company.
Obopay operates in the US and India. It allows those signing up for its service to fund their account with cash or by linking up their credit card or current account. They can then send money to any text-message enabled cell phone. The receiver can either sign up for an Obopay account or have the money transferred directly to their bank account.
Obopay charges 25 cents to send any amount up to $1,000 and nothing to receive it.emily | 3:59 PM | permalink
South African mobile phone operator MTN on Monday said it was launching a banking service on mobile phones in 21 African and Middle East countries where access to traditional banks is poor. Yahoo Tech reports.
MTN is planning to offer a fully-fledged bank account on mobile phones called MTN MobileMoney which will allow users to pay for purchases or check balances. A credit card will be optional.
MTN calls the service "a convenient, secure and affordable way for MTN subscribers to send money, buy airtime and pay bills using their cellphone".
The service will be extended to the other 20 countries where MTN operates including Uganda, Nigeria, Cameroon and Ivory Coast which have a combined 90 million mobile phone users.
The latest tool to fight identity theft may already be in your pocket - it's your mobile phone. Using a new solution from Clickatell a mobile messaging service provider, consumers can be alerted to suspicious bank transactions via text message.
The service called Clickatell SMS Receipts notifies banking customers of account activity via SMS alerts. With this real-time information, consumers are instantly able to verify legitimate use of their account or detect fraud.
Deutsche Bank's Global Transaction Banking (GTB) division has announced that it is introducing mobile phone payments services to its clients in 80 countries across Europe, Middle East and Asia. Cellular News reports.
This new mobile payment service will allow the Bank's GTB clients to offer millions of consumers an instant and secure payments and money transfer service from any mobile device with any mobile network. It is the first time a major commercial bank has offered a cross-border mobile payments service to its banking and corporate customers.
Mobile banking will take off over the next 5 years, led by behavioural challenges in the developing world as people who currently have no access to banking or electronic payment services take up mobile banking. mocoNews reports.
Informa Telecoms & Media predicts that in 2013 almost 300 billion transactions worth more than $860 billion will be conducted using a mobile phone, which would represent a 12-fold increase in gross global transaction values in just five years.
-- Informa predicts that by 2013, over 445 million mobile subscribers will be regularly using their mobile phone to purchase physical goods and services remotely.
-- By 2013 there will be 977 million users of mobile banking services worldwide, compared to around 67 million at the end of 2008 forecasts Informa.
-- Informa predicts that by 2013 almost 424 million consumers will be sending over $157 billion of personal funds via mobile domestically whilst a further 73 million will be sending $48 billion of funds via mobile internationally.
According to IntoMobile, Visa is being sued by a small US business for infringing a patent which covers the use of SMS messages used to alert spenders of transactions.
Charge Notification Services Corporation (CNSC) out of Miami, Florida has taken exception to the service that Visa and some of their partners have recently been offering.
Their patent covers charge card transaction authorization and/or notification in real-time via SMS to a mobile device.
Bill Gates' charitable foundation has pledged $12.5m (£8.6m) to help the world's poor access banking services. The BBC reports.
Working in conjunction with the mobile phone industry, the foundation aims to help provide a basic service that local banks are unable or unwilling to give.
It is thought that more than a billion people worldwide do not have a bank account but do have a mobile phone.
The foundation says that extending banking services to the world's poor is vital for economic progress.
... Research by consultants McKinsey estimates that the mobile money market for people without a bank account could grow to $5bn over the next three years.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates has agreed to help fund a massive rollout of projects enabling poor mobile phone users to transfer money using their handsets, an industry body announced Tuesday. From Yahoo Tech.
The GSM Association, which represents 750 mobile phone networks in the world, said a grant of 12.5 million dollars (9.8 million euros) from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would help fund 20 initiatives in Asia, Africa and South America.
Money transfer via mobile phone is seen as a potential area of growth for network operators in developing countries, where millions are without access to the banking system.
"There's 1.7 billion people in the emerging markets who don't have a bank account but do have a mobile phone, so they could use their mobile phone to conduct financial transactions," explained Michael O'Hara, marketing director or the GSMA.
"The target is to reach 20 million additionnal unbanked people with the service by 2012," he added.
About 12 mobile phone banking programmes have been launched worldwide in the last few years, with about 10 million users benefiting so far.
The Gates Foundation said the grant was part of its programme to extend financial services to the poor who are often without access to a simple savings account.
"The foundation believes that setting aside small sums in a safe place allows people to guard against risks and build financial security," said spokeswoman Susan Byrnes in a statement received by AFP in Washington.
The GSMA estimates that the money transfer market on mobile phones could represent 5.0 billion dollars by 2012.
The mobile banking business is growing in countries like Kenya, Turkey and Japan, while the combining of wallets with cell phones has been held back elsewhere by disagreements over sharing revenues. Reuters reports.
In Kenya and Turkey, millions of people use phones to send money or access their bank accounts; in Japan, more than 50 million people, or about half of all cell phone users, already carry phones capable of serving as wallets.
The technology for paying with cell phones by flashing them near reading equipment in stores or on public transport is ready, and the initial feedback is good, said Mary Carol, head of mobile in Visa Europe (V.N).
"Trials show that consumers overwhelmingly like it," Carol said. "The biggest problem has been the business model."
It will also take at least until 2010 before phones equipped with such technology are widely available, and the financial industry and telecom operators need to agree on some kind of revenue and role split, industry executives say.emily | 10:20 AM | permalink
Although providers of SMS loans charge up to 1,000 percent a year in interest, almost one in every ten Estonians has applied for such a loan, reports Baltic Business News.
It only two years since that the first companies started to offer SMS loans in Estonia this has grown into a business worth at least a billion kroons.
It is believed that the market share of SMS Laen is more than 50 percent in Estonia. There are about ten companies offering SMS loans in Estonia today.
Since about 10 percent of the people who have taken an SMS loan have problems in repaying the debt, this means that also debt collection agencies have plenty of business.
“The number of small borrowers in trouble is increasing,” confirms Jaanus Laidvee from debt collection agency Julianus Inkasso. In average, customers in trouble owe between 20,000 and 25,000 kroons ($1,600 and $2,100).
Paypal has launched an SMS-based authentication system for UK users, which texts a unique code to the customer's mobile phone for them to use when logging in to their account. [via Finextra]
The optional SMS security is being rolled out to UK customers as a free service. PayPal is also offering a physical digital security token costing £3 for users who don't wish to receive the texts on their mobile handsets.
Imagine a technology that lets you pay for products just by waving your cellphone over a reader, writes The New York Times.
The technology exists, and, in fact, people in Japan have been using it for the last five years to pay for everything from train tickets to groceries to candy in vending machines. And in small-scale trials around the world, including in Atlanta, New York and the San Francisco Bay Area, nearly everyone has liked using this form of payment.
But consumers in the United States won’t be able to wave and pay with their cellphones anytime soon: The myriad companies that must work together to give the technology to the masses have yet to agree on how to split the resulting revenue.
The number of mobile banking users will exceed 150 million globally by 2011, according to a new study by Juniper Research. Intomobile reports.
The Juniper Research report determined that the mobile banking market is currently most advanced in the Far East, but that growing numbers of mobile banking services are being offered in North America and Western Europe.
The developed nations of the Far East, North America and Western Europe are forecast to account for over 70% of the user base by 2011.
... More information about Juniper’s report titled “Mobile Banking: Strategies, Applications and Markets 2008-2013″ is available from the research company’s website.
Finland should ban paying out loans received via text message in the middle of the night to curb irresponsible borrowing, the Justice Ministry said. Bloomberg reports.
SMS loans applied for after 11 p.m. shouldn't be paid before 7 a.m., a Justice Ministry working group said in a statement today. Text message lending started in Finland three years ago and has led to increased indebtedness among users of the service in the Nordic nation.
To get a loan, Finns currently send a text message containing the amount requested, their address, personal identity number and bank account number. The lender checks an online credit database, transferring the cash if the details check out and the applicant has a clean credit record. No security is required and loans can be taken out at any time.
Under the proposal, lenders would also be required to include the annual interest rate of the loan in their marketing, and identify applicants using secure procedures, such as web bank logins, the working group said. The government must now decide whether to send the legislation to the parliament for approval.
The average amount of a text message loan during the second quarter was 170 euros and was paid back in 28 days, according to Statistics Finland data. The number of court orders to repay text message loan debt rose 8.7 percent to more than 113,000 in the first nine months of the year,
In parts of Japan, all you have to do in order to pay for something is wave your cell phone. MasterCard is now working on getting the ball rolling for a similar system here in the US, but actually getting equipped phones into the hands of the public will be the real challenge.
Baltic Business reports that police and custom officials arrested an Estonian who arrived to Tallinn Airport with 700 grams of pure cocaine in his stomach.
The 20-year-old Estonian by the name of Veiko was carrying 58 capsules with pure cocaine in his stomach, worth 2.5 million kroons ($203,000) in street value.
Veiko told the authorities that he agreed to become a drug mule because he owed 100,000 kroons ($8,000) for an SMS loan.
Visa unveiled several partnerships on Thursday to move payment processing from the PC to the mobile phone, reports PCMag.
"Visa said a partnership with Nokia would allow consumers to make payments with next year's Nokia 6212 Classic and other next-generation Nokia phones. Visa will also develop an application with Google's Android platform that will allow mobile payments, as well as deliver financial information to Android-based phone owners who also hold Chase Visa cards.
Visa also said that it would launch a trial with U.S. Bank and up to 6,000 cardholders to allow secure funds transfers to other Visa cardholders via mobile phones and PDAs. Finally, the credit merchant said that it was expanding its ReadyLink pre-paid service. "
New technology allowing customers of UK banks to manage their accounts through their mobile phone is being introduced, reports the BBC.
"Lloyds TSBwill next month be the first to allow customers to transfer funds between accounts within the same bank via their mobile.
The software already exists which would allow people to make payments to other people's accounts, but the banks have chosen to bring in this system slowly.
... The system, run by a mobile money network called Monilink, also allows parents to top up the credit on their children's pay-as-you-go mobile phones via their own.
A text alert service for when customers are within £50 of their balance limit is also in place.
This new development will allow consumers to download some simple software to phones with internet access and a colour screen. They will then enter a six-digit security code before they can view their balance or transfer money between their own Lloyds TSB accounts. "
Mexicans will soon be able to pay for small purchases such as restaurant meals and taxi rides using their mobile telephones, the country's banks said on Monday, writes The Washington Post.
"Telephone operators such as Telefonica and Iusacell are teaming up with big banks such as Citigroup and BBVA to launch the new service.
Cell phone users will be able to have their bank link their savings account to their telephone so they can make payments to participating stores, restaurants and taxis by sending a text message."
The small Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives has begun setting up a pioneering system which it hopes will make it one of the first countries whose citizens bank primarily using mobile phones, reports the BBC.
All the country's banks have been brought together under a single system to allow the islands' residents to pay money in and out swiftly without the need to travel to the nearest branch - which could be many miles away.
The Maldives received a US$7.7m loan from the World Bank in April, allowing it to begin establishing m-banking. It was seen as an ideal place to start up, with a relatively high GDP and lots of people with mobile phones. "
Australians are among the most reluctant people in the world to use mobile phones for online banking and shopping, research has found. News.com.au reports.
"In a survey of people in 14 countries on their attitudes towards using mobile devices for making payments and banking, only the French and the British were more suspicious of the technology.
... The research by Unisys found 78 per cent of Australian respondents would not use a mobile phone to pay a bill, shop or bank online.
In France it was 86 per cent, Britain 79 per cent, Belgium and Italy 77 per cent and in the US 71 per cent. "
SMS-loans account for 20 percent of problem debts in Finland and according to the Finnish statistics bureau, Finns have taken about 270,000 SMS loans in the first quarter. Baltic Business News reports.
"The Finnish Justice Minister set up a group in October to probe text lending.
In the first half of the year, Finland's courts issued 15,500 orders for text borrowers to repay loans, 63 pct more than a year earlier. 40 percent involved borrowers under 25.
Finland has more than 40 SMS loan providers, and the industry is spreading. "
A wonderful and thorough article from The Guardian on how cell phones in Africa are revolutionizing the way money circulates.
"For consumers in developed markets, using a mobile phone for banking services is a smart add-on to a bank's branch network. But to people in the developing world, the arrival of mobile banking - or m-banking - is potentially revolutionary.
"If money is an economy's lifeblood, improving its circulation plays a critical role. Many Africans living in rural areas, for instance, rely on money sent home by members of their family who work in towns and cities. But getting that cash to a village that could be hundreds of miles away is a tricky business. In Kenya, for example, workers in urban areas hand wages over to bus drivers, who promise to stop off at the worker's home village en route to their destination.
... Services have sprung up that let people transfer cash by text message to other mobile phone users and give Africa's vast number of "unbanked" their first access to financial products. Instead of using a bank branch, these services rely on local retailers who already sell mobile top-up cards."
The bank's "balance on demand" service, which the bank says is Britain's first, goes live today. To use it, customers text BAL and the last four digits of their current account to a special short phone number.
The market of mobile financial services to poor people in emerging markets will surge from nothing to $5 billion in 2012, U.S.-based microfinance policy and research center 
MasterCard has 
Last week, 
Mobile banking will take off over the next 5 years, led by behavioural challenges in the developing world as people who currently have no access to banking or electronic payment services take up mobile banking. 
According to 
Bill Gates' charitable foundation has pledged $12.5m (£8.6m) to help the world's poor access banking services. The 
The mobile banking business is growing in countries like Kenya, Turkey and Japan, while the combining of wallets with cell phones has been held back elsewhere by disagreements over sharing revenues. 
Although providers of SMS loans charge up to 1,000 percent a year in interest, almost one in every ten Estonians has applied for such a loan, reports 
Imagine a technology that lets you pay for products just by waving your cellphone over a reader, writes 
Finland should ban paying out loans received via text message in the middle of the night to curb irresponsible borrowing, the Justice Ministry said. 
New technology allowing customers of UK banks to manage their accounts through their mobile phone is being introduced, reports the 
A wonderful and thorough article from 
