What is your institution doing in regards to remote deposit? Are you focusing on mobile banking? Clearly, this presents a huge opportunity in the near future for financial institutions.

The articled featured an interesting set of data that is surprising and encouraging:

Eighty-nine percent of the community bankers polled in a nationwide survey said they are considering some form of enhancement to their existing platform. That includes 54% looking to design a mobile application for a smartphone, such as an iPhone, and 35% planning to add some type of functionality to their existing platform. At the same time, 9% of bankers said they were going to change their provider, and 4% were discontinuing the service altogether.

What surprises me, is the overall focus on mobile within the community bank space. While mobile certainly remains an untapped space for a lot of financial institutions, I would assume that improving their online banking platform would be of higher priority at this point. Then again, if the trend is shifting toward mobile, is online banking that important  for today’s bank customer?

Some data to consider in regards to whether mobile is a smart focus for community banks:

• 66 million users in North America will be mobile banking customers in 2015, according to an ABI survey.
• 70 percent of smartphone users had used at least one mobile banking and/or payments service in the past three months, according to a survey by Data Innovation.

So what do you think? Is mobile banking worth the hype? Should community banks be focusing on mobile, or is there another area they should be putting their resources toward?

Not much surprise on the mobile performance indicies. Would assume Wells Fargo to improve as time goes on, but the major players are there.

Not everything is as rosy as MasterCard claims though, as the iPhone application – which has been available for about a year – getting mixed reviews. Some users complain of the application not working properly outside of the U.S. where it appears to be outdated.

One reviewer, identified only as Scott-USA, said the iPhone app “is just OK for use in the U.S. and Canada, but for finding ATMs in other countries this app seems to be outdated and almost useless.”  Scott, who said he is a frequent Bangkok, Thailand, visitor, said he used ATM Hunter to locate machines near JW Marriott, Sheraton Grande and Four Seasons hotels. “The app came back with no ATMs found,” Scott writes.

This begs the question of financial institutions rushing to push out applications and not focusing on the maintenance and upkeep. An idea is only as good as its execution, and this story is a perfect example of a company focusing on convenience, but overlooking critical steps.

In hindsight, the ‘ATM Hunter’ is a great resource for MasterCard’s customers. The lack of continually testing the application after its release is disheartening, as a lack of functionality is a sure recipe for customer frustration. Hopefully MasterCard will continue to provide updates to the application.

USAA, already known as a leader in the social space, is taking mobile banking to another level by introducing a technology that allows its systems to recognize individual mobile phones. The technology, which is currently awaiting approval in Apple’s iTunes site, looks to simplify the log-in process. Currently, customers enter three pieces of information: username, password and PIN. The new process would only require a secure four-digit PIN.

As more and more customers trend toward mobile banking, it’s vital for financial institutions to create a more user-friendly platform for its mobile customers. As USAA is showing, you don’t need to sacrifice security or function to accomplish this. If you’re a financial institution, what are you doing to provide a positive experience for the increasing trend of mobile banking?

USAA’s application is expected to be available for Android users in April.

For the official release, please visit their Newsroom.

VeriFone

Initially, the card reader will be shipped to current VeriFone merchants in January, and will also sell the service directly and through third-party organizations. Independent sellers and acquirers will have their own pricing.

Two weeks ago, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey announced the launch of Square – see post below. While I was critical of Square’s approach, I see VeriFone’s entrance a bit more strategic and viable. While Dorsey has the hype and media buzz of Twitter, VeriFone has the credibility and established business. I’d take credibility and an established network over hype any day of the week. Additionally, the platform already complies with the Payment Card Industry Security Council’s Payment Security Standard – a feature that Square has yet to obtain and may ultimately be their biggest hurdle.

VeriFone will require merchants to use its Payware Mobile payment gateway, which processes transactions through First Data Corp, although it will be available through other processors. Price wise, it appears to be competitive. Existing merchant will pay a $15 monthly fee, a one-time fee to use Payware and then a per transaction fee of  17 cents.

Representatives indicated that they will begin to develop a similar platform for other mobile devices such as the Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and Google’s Android devices.

Ultimately, this serves as an immediate and viable threat to Square. I’ve said before that the biggest hurdle in the mobile payment space is the adoption process amongst consumers. It is my belief that in order to make significant progress in mobile payments, you need to have the resources, and more importantly, brand name of a large financial organization – or at least partner with one. This move by VeriFone is a wake-up call for large financial institutions and service companies, as the space finally has a credible player.

The CEO Mobile application allows access to Well’s Commercial Electronic Office (CEO) portal services, in which users can monitor balances, approve payments, review intraday transactions and administration functions.

In a time where many business owners are constantly on the go and away from computer access, more are turning to mobile access. Wells Fargo, a leader in mobile banking, introduced the CEO portal in 2007 and has continually updated and improved the platform.

As I mentioned in previous posts, mobile banking and allowing customers 24/7 access, regardless of the vehicle, will continue to be an increasing trend as we head into 2010 and beyond. Those institutions that allow seamless technological integration of their products and services will see an increase in customer retention and market share.