Finovate Blog

I keep running across Malauzai Software as I research mobile innovations. They have developed some of the cool stuff at City Bank of Texas (previous post) along with photo billpay at First Financial (previous post).

The software developer has also been pioneering mobile auto-login, a feature I’ve written about a number of times (see note 1). In fact, Malauzai has been offering a no-login option, called SmarText, for almost a year. In terms of installed clients, they are clearly the market leader.

With this optional feature, users that have enabled Auto Login are shown their balance and recent transactions as soon as the native app loads. No login required (see screenshots below). However, to do anything transactional, users must conduct a full username/password log in (see last screenshot). 

Malauzai’s SmarText passed compliance/security scrutiny at its clients since the system is no less secure that text banking. The system takes the balance/transaction info that would normally arrive via text message and displays it within the native app.  

City Bank of Texas was the first Malauzai client to adopt the technology in May 2012. Since then another 125 banks and credit unions signed up for the option, and 90 are live. Here are some stats across all the FIs:

• 107,000 registered users
• 145,000 downloads
• 15% of users are opting for Auto-login
• Auto-login accounts for 20% of total logins
• Best of class clients have a 25% opt-in rate

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When Auto Login option is selected (left), balance and recent transactions are be displayed immediately

However, full login required for transactions

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Note (Who’s on first?):

1. I get pretty excited when reporting new fintech bells and/or whistles. And I like to reward those pushing the envelope by anointing them first. But that can be risky. There can be a number of parties pushing it forward, making the claim of first murky at best.

That goes with the concept of no-login mobile balance lookup. Here’s a timeline of the various firsts in the United States for this technology:

• April 2011 >>> First bank savings account: Southern Bancorp "Shake & Bank" youth savings account post
• July 2012 >>> First PFM (with aggregated bank data): Mint Quickview (Mac only)
• Feb 2013 >>> First major bank (checking):  Bank of the West post (powered by Fiserv)
• March 2013 >>> First card issuer: Barclayscard post

Then there are a couple other "firsts" that I missed at the time:

• Jan 2013 >>> First bank (prepaid card): Green Dot’s GoBank
• May 2012 >>> First bank (checking): City Bank of Texas (powered by Malauzai, see above)

OK, I think that sets the record straight. Thanks everyone for innovating past the pesky mobile login problem.