“Otherwise, this is a win-win,” Mr. Beccue said. “Consumers gain convenience and new services, [and] banks gain cost savings, stickiness and potential new customers.”

What new services will they provide over existing online banking options? Will they allow you to make transactions via text messages (if you’ve registered your number)? What else could there be?

@Zealot:

The nearly weekly announcment of companies being hacked and losing confidential customer data doesn’t help matters. I think it will be a few more years at least until the mainstream trust their cellphone as a financial tool.

I don’t know. There are systems in Asia where you swipe your phone to make payments, I believe, so lots of people are already using their phones as financial tools.

Also, remember that banks have been on the Internet for a long time. Mobile banking will probably just be a mobile version of a bank’s existing Web site. If you trust that site’s security, and the bank’s site works on your phone (meaning the browser security is strong enough), I think people will trust it.

My problem is that, for the most part, the only time I use online banking is when I’m paying my bills. That happens at home, where I have the bills and my financial programs on my PC. So I don’t see very many instances where I’d want to use mobile banking.

I suppose I might check a balance occasionally. If I forgot to transfer money from my savings account to checking for my bills, I could do that while mobile (assuming I remembered after the fact). People who are “bad” financially and rely on the float may log on to see if checks have cleared before they write another check, but the float has gotten shorter with EFT and Check 21 (or whatever the imaging program was called).

But most of what I need to do I also enter in my financial programs, so I probably wouldn’t do many transactions while moble.

However, if they can make my phone print money so I don’t need to visit an ATM, I’ll be all over that. :-D Before you laugh (as I was doing), it’s not impossible. The US Postal Service lets you print your own stamps with bar codes. Why couldn’t the Treasury Department let you print money the same way?

Steve

People are very hesitant about banking and such things…look how long it has taken for online shopping to begin to take off.

The nearly weekly announcment of companies being hacked and losing confidential customer data doesn’t help matters. I think it will be a few more years at least until the mainstream trust their cellphone as a financial tool.