Original post by JEANNE CAPACHIN via AmericanBanker
This article is from the annual FinTech Forward special report.
Only a handful of banks and credit unions aren’t offering mobile banking now. Yet, investment remains a high priority as we move into 2015. Where are today’s investment dollars being spent, and what are the investment priorities that we see now?
U.S. banks are juggling many investment priorities, and there’s no overwhelming imperative in the next two years. That said, 28% of institutions have declared mobile banking one of their top three priorities.
However, these institutions are planning for short-term projects and then will move on to the next thing: BAI’s research into long-term plans finds mobile banking doesn’t even make the list.
The kinds of near-term enhancements banks are making to their mobile offerings include using the camera for bill-pay and account opening, replacing first generation platforms with those built using responsive design, or decoupling mobile banking enrollment from online banking.
NOT JUST A SMALLER ONLINE BANKING SITE:
With this current wave of investment, we will see a greater divergence between mobile and online banking solutions. More of the unique capabilities of mobile devices, such as their built-in picture-taking ability, will be leveraged for banking services. The camera can be used to take a selfie and create a biometric user authentication using retina scanning. The camera is also being used to take pictures of government-issued credentials that can then be compared to databases to verify their authenticity. Both of these capabilities improve user experience and increase the fraud controls banks can access as they roll out more mobile offerings. The camera, geolocation services, and mobile operator subscriber databases are all being leveraged to improve banking services and increase the security of mobile banking. For example, First Bank in Colorado, U.S. Bank, BBVA Compass and City Bank Texas have rolled out mobile photo bill pay. Using the camera, consumers take a photo of the bill and extract biller information automatically to set up the payment information.
