CTIA: AT&T’s Cingular announces mobile banking plans

ORLANDO--AT&T’s Cingular Wireless division announced at Wireless 2007 here that it has teamed up with four major banking firms and applications developer Firethorn Holdings to allow Cingular customers to use some banking capabilities, such as fund transfers and account balance checks, on their cell phones.

The banks involved include Wachovia, Regions Financial, SunTrust Banks, and BancorpSouth. The new capabilities will be available via download immediately for users who do their banking at BancorpSouth institutions, with further availability coming later this year. Cingular officials said they also will offer devices with embedded applications later in the year.

The new capabilities represented the deepest foray into mobile banking thus far by a major U.S. carrier. However, several service providers overseas, especially in Asia, are already going further by pursuing the concept of the mobile phone as a credit card device for contactless payments.

Cingular officials said they are in talks with several other banks to expand availability of the new services.