The Future of Mobile Banking

I have been taking a look the the mobile banking space as it relates to CRM for financial institutions. Many major banks offer mobile solutions today and often cite mobile technology as their top innovation initiative. Expect the growth will continue alongside rising smartphone popularity, younger consumers’ spending, and comfort with mobile payment systems. American consumers have nearly doubled mobile banking use in the eighteen months prior to October 2010.

ClairMail caught my attention as the early leader. The company offers a mobile banking and payments platform that is in use at 8 of the top 12 US banks. There is a pretty good chance your bank uses ClairMail’s technology. The platform offers messaging, mobile web and smart client applications which provides 100% mobile coverage. Interestingly, the mobile phone is more secure than a web transaction and gives the bank and customer, real-time, actionable alerts and notifications. This ticks 3 big CRM boxes, acquisition, retention and conversation. Because of these capabilities the company has been successful in deploying at those 8 banks as well. 800% increase in customer adoption for their clients is truly impressive. Joe Salesky, Chairman, Founder & CSO has stated often that the challenge is to determine, “How can you (the bank) expand a relationship, when you have very little interaction with this customer (the bank customer)?”

The banks are ready and the customers of those banks seem to be ready. The company has a strong first-mover advantage. I would expect a shake-out of the space in the next 12-24 months. It remains to be seen; however, if this technology can adapt to lower cost footprints like the cloud. Banks are understandably fanatical about security. They may not have any interest in moving to the cloud.

ClairMail recently released fraud management product to more quickly identify fraudulent transactions. This is a very interesting company and one to watch. Check the TechCrunch article: Clairmail Brings Fraud Management To Mobile Banking Technology.