Cba Will Offer Mobile Banking
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday June 11, 1999
Commonwealth Bank and Vodafone will introduce Australia's first mobile banking service in September.
The service will allow bank customers to access their financial information on a mobile phone screen, to transfer funds between accounts, check balances and pay bills.
Other features are expected to become available next year, including share trading using the short messaging service available on digital mobile phones. Commonwealth Bank's Commonwealth Securities already has one of Australia's largest online broking sites with 60,000 customers.
Phone banking is not new, but in the past has been limited by voice-only systems that required bank customers to wait for voice prompts and enter long series of numbers.
To use the new service, customers will need to have a new model GSM digital mobile phone, such as the Nokia 6150, released two months ago, or Ericsson T185.
Mr John Mulcahy, head of banking and financial services for Commonwealth Bank, said the decision to invest in mobile banking was driven by the 2.7 million customers who had taken up its phone banking services, making 1.8 million calls a week. Another 1.7 million transactions were being made on the bank's Internet site each month.
Vodafone marketing director Mr Paul Heath said the deal with Commonwealth Bank was not exclusive, although both parties had invested in developing technology for the service.
© 1999 Sydney Morning Herald
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