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."
World Bank on Thursday approved a $7.7 million credit to the Maldives to improve financial services for banking by mobile phones, reports All Headline News.
"The mobile phone banking project will create a single currency payment system which offers a set of mobile telephone-based accounts," the World Bank said in a press statement.
The system will enable subscribers to transfer funds to and from bank accounts and to and from telephone-based accounts, according to the statement."
Western Union is teaming up with Radio Shack and a small wireless company to offer a service that lets people transfer money and pay bills through pre-paid cellphones. The Wall Street Journal reports.
"The service is aimed at immigrants in the U.S. who regularly send money to family members in their native countries. Many of these immigrants don't have bank accounts and send the money by taking cash to a money-transfer service such as Western Union or a host of other firms."
According to the AFP, the simplicity of obtaining SMS loans in Sweden is increasingly luring youths into debt.
"The first (SMS) loan was given in the middle of March 2006," said Janne Aakerlund, a spokesman for Sweden's debt recovery agency Kronofogden, adding that the first bill collectors were sent out just three months later.
Since then, the number of un-repaid text message loans has soared: in 2007, Kronofogden was tasked with collecting debts from 20,000 such loans, 35.9 percent of which were granted to people aged 18 to 25.
"There is reason to be seriously concerned about this development," head of the Swedish Consumer Agency, Gunnar Larsson, told AFP."
Australian online share trading and wealth creation platform, Bell Direct, has launched an SMS share trading service.
Customers wanting to buy or sell via the new SMS service simply have to text message their order to Bell Direct in a simple buy/sell-stock code-quantity-price format. Shortly after, they’ll receive confirmation of the order, which, if correct, is then sent back with a hash-encoded time-stamp unique to that order.
Although brand new to Australia, SMS share trading is already extremely popular in South East Asian markets such as China, Malaysia and South Korea.
Customers at La Caixa, Spain’s largest savings bank, are being urged to spurn the queues for automatic teller machines. Instead, as suggested by a campaign being launched today, they should call up a virtual cash machine from the comfort of their 3G telephones. With a few taps on the keyboard, they will have access to most conventional ATM functions, with the obvious exception of cash withdrawal.
British operator Vodafone announced Monday at the industry's annual trade show in Barcelona that it would launch a money transfer service in Afghanistan after the successful introduction of a similar initiative in Kenya.
"An estimated 1.6 million people have begun using the Vodafone scheme in Kenya since its launch in March last year. In a country of 10 million mobile phone users, there are only 400 bank outlets and 600 automatic teller machines."
A report released by Juniper Research shows that the rush by banks and mobile operators to offer financial services through the mobile phone will lead to just over 612 million mobile phone users generating over $587 billion worth of financial transactions by 2011.
According to Juniper Research, the usage of mobile phones as a tool is a watershed in the history of the sector. In the past, the Automated Telling Machine (ATM) had revolutionized the banking and cash business in a similar manner, although it had taken around 20 years for the industry to leverage its full potential.
Mobile financial services are being implemented at a rapid rate and Internet banking services are witnessing a similar trend. The ‘fourth screen’ of financial services is the mobile phone, which is now a pocket ATM. This service enables mobile phone users to conduct banking transactions on the fly.
Mobile Financial Services (MFS) has been segregated into two distinct areas - Mobile Banking and Mobile Payments. The Mobile Payments segment has been predicted to create $22bn transactions by 2011 and it is expected that the number of mobile phone users adopting this service will grow to 204 million.
Further details of the study 'Mobile Financial Services: Banking & payment markets 2007-2011' can be downloaded from the company's website
Since the introduction of sms-loans in 2006 - offering loans of up to 300 US dollars in minutes, simply by sending a text message - more and more Swedes are landing debt. Last year over 20,000 cases were reported to the Swedish Enforcement Agency, responsible for collecting debts. Sveriges Radio International reports.
"A spokesperson for the Agency said that they had not expected so many cases to be reported. Originally they predicted there would be some 10,000 cases.
The age group worst hit are 18-25 year-olds who account for 36% of those in debt.
The wide availability of sms-loans has been criticized heavily in Sweden for having bad credit checks of their customers as well as interest rates which can reach up to 800%."
Six months after rolling out its Mobile Banking service to consumers in the USA, Bank of America says that it has reached a record 500,000 active mobile customers.
According to a recent Tower Group report, that's more than all other U.S. banks combined.
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. 
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 
A report released by 
Since 
Six months after rolling out its Mobile Banking service to consumers in the USA, 
