Cashing in on M-Banking

From ATMs to e-commerce to m-banking, banks are early adopters of new technology.

Not only do banks have huge customer bases, but they also are quick to introduce these customers to new technology. Bell Mobility has found that partnering with banks is a great way to acquire new customers and get them using the company's Mobile Browser wireless Internet service.

Bell Mobility launched Mobile Browser in May 1999. The carrier got its wireless Internet offering out the door with many partnerships, including financial applications from Charles Schwab and the Bank of Montreal. Since then, Bell Mobility has signed on all but one of the large national banks in Canada to offer m-banking services, which allow these banks' customers to check account balances and recent transactions, pay bills and transfer funds, as well as access stock quotes, alerts, trade confirmations and personal portfolios.

Kelly Dixon, Bell Mobility general manager of wireless data and Inter-net, noted that although Bell Mobility does not have service throughout Canada yet, it will offer services across the country later this year. Since all Canadian banks are national, it was easy for Bell Mobility to provide Internet banking services to its entire customer base, no matter which bank it partnered with.

Since the Mobile Browser service was born, Bell Mobility customers have rated the company's financial sites as their favorites. Dixon suggested that one reason customers keep coming back to the financial applications is because they are so user-friendly.

"As far as functionality and ease of use, financial sites always have tested extremely high," she said. "Their applications are easy, transactional, require limited input, and they are fast. You can do a stock quote in 20 seconds, which is just as fast, if not faster, than you can get it off the PC."

Dixon said that lately, potential wireless customers are seeking carriers that can meet their Internet banking needs.

"Our research has proven that Internet banking is a decision point and a criteria maker for someone looking to do wireless," she said.

Surprisingly, the company's research also has shown that m-banking is attracting more than the typical business user. A focus group of 18- to 20-year olds was fond of looking up stock quotes.

"So although the target market is brokerage customers, it is getting a wide attraction," Dixon said.

Currently, Bell Mobility does not generate added revenue from customers that use m-banking applications. Instead, it partners with banks in order to acquire more customers and to generate usage of its Mobile Browser service.

"Our focus is to ensure our customers have enough value to use the Mobile Browser," she said.

Case in Point: Scotiabank

Dixon said Scotiabank is one Canadian bank that has been particularly aggressive with its m-banking strategy. Bell Mobility commenced trials with Scotiabank early on in its Mobile Browser roll-out and commercially launched an m-banking program with the bank last April. Like Bell Mobility, which has partnered with practically every bank in Canada, Scotiabank has aligned itself with most Canadian wireless carriers. Scotiabank chose Bell Mobility as its first carrier partner, both because of the carrier's leadership in the market, as well as the fact that it is the largest carrier in Canada, enabling Scotiabank to target the highest number of customers.

Scotiabank predicts that by the end of 2003, its customers will conduct close to 50% of e-commerce Web transactions through wireless devices. To ensure that it tailored its business to meet the m-banking needs of its customers, Scotiabank set up e-Scotia.com, an e-commerce subsidiary.

"Our vision was to offer Canadians access to our banking and brokerage services anytime, anyplace, (24/7)," said Albert Wahbe, Scotiabank executive vice president of electronic banking and e-Scotia.com president. "To accomplish this, wireless plays a major role in complementing this offering to our customers. To offer these services, Bell Mobility was part and parcel in our strategy to complement the brand."

Although Scotiabank is in 50 countries, Canada is its biggest operation, with almost 1,200 branches. Scotiabank has set up four call centers - Eastern, Western and Central Canada, plus one in Montreal - to serve its e-Scotia.com customers.

"We also recently launched Web TV with Rogers, so if you are at home using your TV, you can use the Microsoft set-top box and the wireless keyboard and do banking services with us," Wahbe said. "All these offerings complement one another."

A Multifaceted Partnership

Dixon said the Bell Mobility-Scotiabank partnership goes beyond simply offering both companies' sets of customers access to one another's services. The two companies worked together in the planning stages, developing co-branded marketing campaigns as well as training each other's CSRs.

"It is a lot of integration just from the point of establishing partnerships," Dixon said.

For instance, Scotiabank has sent out direct mailings to its customer base that have provided an incentive to join Bell Mobility. Additionally, the bank has promoted its m-banking services through Bell Mobility in its bill inserts.

"We have done announcements, presentations, circulars, the whole gamut," Wahbe said. "We want to be aggressive because the sooner we get to customers and the sooner we inform the public in general that we are taking the leadership, the better off we are."

One way Scotiabank took the leadership role in m-banking was to develop a full demo service so that people who didn't have a Scotiabank Internet-enabled account could test the m-banking service through their WAP-enabled handsets to see exactly how it worked.

"Scotiabank pioneered that, and I think that was incredible on their part," said Ken Truffen, Bell Mobility associate director, wireless Internet and data. "People could click the demo option, it would give a mock-up account number, and the user experience would be as if they were using it for real. Brokerage quotes, transferring funds, paying bills, checking account history."

Besides co-developing marketing campaigns, the two companies trained one another's CSRs and IT departments. Bell Mobility wanted to be sure that when customers called with questions about the m-banking service that its CSRs were equipped to handle questions about Scotiabank as well.

"Bell Mobility helped our call-center people by giving us special training on how to handle the specifics of the service," Wahbe said. "A RIM pager is different from a Mobility wireless phone, which is different from Web TV, so we help each other in learning the particulars of each other's offerings."

Dixon pointed out that when Bell Mobility partners with a bank, the partnership impacts both companies' customer-service, marketing, strategic-planning, sales and IT departments. Therefore, the carrier has set up a dedicated cross-functional team of 15 to 20 employees that act as a support mechanism before, during and after a partnership is launched.

"Typically we and the banks match key resources on both sides to work directly on kicking off these programs," she said.

As part of its partnership program, Bell Mobility also helps its banking partners redesign their Web sites for wireless devices to ensure that the sites are quick and easy for customers to use. Because each bank's Web site has grown more and more every year, she has noticed that banks are excited to start from scratch with a new wireless site.

"A wireless site is an extension of a Web site to some degree, but it also gives banks an opportunity to re-look at the customer experience and make it easy," she said. "You have to remember the customer is mobile."

The two companies have worked together on the technical side as well. For instance, Scotiabank customers already went through a registration process when they signed up for electronic banking via their PCs. At that time, they chose passwords and personal identification numbers (PINs) for Scotiabank's wired Web site. Bell Mobility wanted to make the m-banking experience easy for these customers by avoiding a second registration process and allowing them to use the same passwords and PINs, no matter how they access the Scotiabank site.

Dixon stressed that security is a major concern for both Bell Mobility and Scotiabank customers. Before any bank will work with Bell Mobility, the bank puts the carrier through a rigorous security audit to ensure that the carrier's back end consists of a trusted environment and hardened infrastructure.

"When a call comes in, it is encrypted through CDMA and is taken through our server back to the bank," Dixon said. "If it is a customer of Scotiabank, we recognize it and send it to the Scotiabank Web site, and it then goes behind all their security measures and password and PIN protection mechanisms."

Scotiabank's Wahbe is confident not only in Bell Mobility's security, but also in the security of all wireless networks in Canada.

"Wireless is very secure as far as I am concerned," he said. "The wireless network in Canada is encrypted. In fact, I believe that wireless today in North America is more secure than using your regular phone because wireless has encryption all the way to the call center."

Both Wahbe and Dixon reiterated the importance of banks and wireless carriers working as a team when setting up partnerships, whether it is in the area of security, marketing, training or technical support. From market trials to product launch and beyond, banks and carriers have to see eye-to-eye in order for m-banking to succeed.

"This is one thing everyone realizes: no one can do it on their own," Dixon said. "You have to partner. If we wanted to provide the services that Scotiabank did, we would have to become a bank. So to focus on our core competencies and being able to work with them, we provide benefits to customers."

M-Banking Hits the U.S. Market

Jupiter Communications estimates that 102 million consumers in the United States will access the Internet through mobile devices by 2003. Many U.S. banks are tapping into this market through carrier partnerships.

In March 2000, Harris Bank, 724 Solutions and Sprint PCS began enrolling customers for the second phase of a market trial for Harris Wireless banking service, making it the first U.S. bank to publicly deliver wireless access to banking and investment services. Customers who use Harris Wireless will be able to bank online, view account balances and transaction histories, transfer funds between Harris accounts, request check re-orders, request stock and index quotes, view personal investment portfolios, and create and receive stock alerts.

Last August, in conjunction with 724 Solutions, Bank of America launched its first U.S. wireless banking and brokerage offering. The wireless financial services are delivered through several wireless carriers, including AT&T Wireless Services, Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless. Customers can view account balances and transaction histories for Bank of America checking, savings and credit-card accounts, and transfer funds between deposit accounts using devices such as Palm Vx with OmniSky Modem, Motorola StarTac, Motorola Timeport, Neo-Point 1000 and Mitsubishi t250.

In addition to agreements with Bank of America and Harris Bank, Sprint PCS has several other content partners on its Wireless Web that handle online banking and trading.

"We are getting new content partners every day, and have some more financial partnerships coming up in the upcoming months," said Amanda Martinek, Sprint PCS public relations analyst.

Similarly, Verizon Wireless customers can get stock alerts and trade through E superscript *Trade, Fidelity, TD Waterhouse and DLJ Direct. AT&T Wireless provides stock trading through DLJ Direct, Charles Schwab, TD Waterhouse, E superscript *Trade and Ameritrade. AT&T Wireless offers financial services through Claritybank.com. Also, ATM Finder, a feature on AT&T Wireless Digital PocketNet phones, allows customers to locate the nearest ATM.

Cingular wireless has launched service with E superscript *Trade and Fidelity.

"We are currently working on extending this further in trading and into banking," said Stephen Krom, Cingular vice president of marketing, data and Internet services.