Sunday, July 13, 2008

Fierce 15 for 2008

Looking at the latest list of Start-Up in Wireless to follow from the Fierce point of view I was interested to see that mFoundry was one tipped for a bright future. Since first hearing of them they have managed to get funding from Bank of American and now serve 15 of the top 20 Banks in America when it comes to mobile banking. The PayPal P2P payment service on mobile is one that uses mFoundry.

"Effective mobile-banking marketing targets specific segments, such as business travelers, and highlights the ways mobile banking can serve the segments," said Tripp Rackley CEO of Firethorn at the Mobile Commerce Summit last month in Las Vegas. Marketing to specific groups also helps financial institutions gain more mobile users than just the early adopters, he added.

American Banker says that within 12-24 months ALL Financial institutions will use Mobile as a channel to customers. If this is right then mFoundry and Firethorn along with ClairMail and Yodlee will be at the centre of a very profitable industry. Javelin have been looking at the market for some time and Bruce Cundiff reports that almost a third of users are Paying Bills, almost the same are monitoring transactions and over a quater are transfering funds between accounts.

Whilst all these things excite me, I am frustrtaed by the fact that as a Customer of the Halifax I am at the back of the line when it comes to technology adoption. The way that the "Bank" has adopted faster payments shows that they are very much a follower when it comes to new technology.

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