Finovate Blog

I just returned from an enjoyable day and a half at the inaugural Mobile Commerce Summit put on by SourceMedia, the publisher of American Banker and numerous other financial publications.

The conference featured speakers from the entire mobile banking and payments food chain including wireless carriers, device manufacturers, mobile platform vendors, text-message service providers, security companies, research companies, and 70 to 80 financial institutions of all sizes. My estimate of total attendance was 250-300.

In a show of hands, the functional disciplines of the financial institution folks split roughly 50/50 between IT and the business/marketing side.

Since I'd heard most of the vendor presentations a few months ago at the Mobile Payment Forum, the most interesting part for me was hearing the results of the BancorpSouth pilot with AT&T, Firethorn, and CheckFree. Michael Lindsey, senior vice president, electronic delivery at BancorpSouth, described the results during one of the few solo performances of the show. I will post an update on BancorpSouth tomorrow.

The major themes of the conference:

• Mobile banking has arrived.
• Mobile payments, at least in the United States, are some years away; widespread U.S. adoption needs a critical mass of contactless terminals.
• Short-term, mobile banking will be delivered through a mix of text messaging, WAP sites, and downloadable applications. Each has its own pros and cons, but ultimately consumers will vote with their wallets. On stage anyway, the vendors of the various and different models were extremely conciliatory, complementing other models and providers.
• Security of the mobile channel is generally much better than online (at least in the days before multi-factor authentication).
• The U.S. wireless carriers were generally portrayed as hindering developments, although Spencer White of AT&T did an admirable job of defending the carrier's position.

Best analogy from the podium:

• When explaining why carriers don't want open access to their phones, Tripp Rackley, CEO of Firethorn, explained how that would be like someone allowing anyone to add untested apps to your ATM machine.

Best answer to a question from the audience:

• When asked what the future mobile device might look like, Spencer White, director of mobile financial services from AT&T said, "We are looking at phones that print money." (OK, maybe you had to be there.)

Funnest presentation:

• Richard Crone, of Crone Consulting, was entertaining as always, tossing out Obopay T-shirts to members of the audience while delivering a presentation chock full of good advice for financial institutions and other mobile players.

Most discouraging stat:

• Among the dozen or so clients of Digital Insight that have launched the mShift-powered WAP site, only 0.5% of Internet banking users are using it, and even the best of the bunch is 1.5% (caveat, most of the mobile installations happened during the past month).

Most encouraging stat:

• Among BancorpSouth's pilot users that were already using online bill payment, bill payment volume INCREASED by 25%, indicating the mobile option created more engagement with transaction capabilities.

Weirdest thing we learned:

• One speaker's 14-year old daughter's non-negotiable mobile phone purchase-criteria was that the phone have a charm holder (this created a new conference metaphor with "the charm holder" being used to describe any consumer-driven feature).