Streamlining that task is one of the new sweet spots for corporate mobile banking, which is arriving later to mobile financial services than consumer mobile banking, yet offers almost as much promise-if not more. "We can allow users to enter out-of-pocket expenses on the mobile device while traveling on business, so these expenses can be entered directly into the firm's expense reporting system," says Ranjit Pradhan, product manager for Well Fargo's corporate mobile banking product. Wells, which has offered some form of corporate mobile banking for three years, has recently been beefing up its CEO Mobile ("Commercial Electronic Office") platform to include a wide range of treasury management and other corporate functions, including travel expense.
Employees at Wells' clients can use the free app to approve transfers, check balances and execute ACH transactions by using CEO Mobile, a device-agnostic native mobile platform that was mostly developed internally by the bank's IT team. The bank has processed more than $5 billion in corporate wire transfers over the past three years, though it wouldn't release other adoption numbers.
The IT team is also behind the new additions to the service, which include a corporate payment card that leverages mobile devices for travel expense reporting and a feature that lets an executive at a client firm add to a corporate card's balance via the mobile device to accommodate unexpected expenses while a staffer is on the road. Also on the long-term agenda is building corporate sales and marketing capabilities for tablets, though Pradhan says the primary focus right now for corporate is on the treasury management function.
Standard Chartered Bank has also focused its early foray into corporate mobile on apps for senior managers in corporate treasury. "They are often away from their desks and their time is particularly precious," says Tom Wiles, global head of channels, transaction banking, for Standard Chartered Bank, which launched its iPhone corporate banking app in October 2010 and an Android app in February.
It's a shrewd focus, as Aite and Fundtech say more than two thirds of corporate treasury management executives are interested in mobile banking. And while more than half are willing to pay for it, most current corporate mobile apps are free, and considered a value-ad gateway to other services.
Wiles says the treasury management operation is a good bet for corporate mobile plays because senior managers have to travel and authorize large transactions simultaneously. "We found that they were frequently delegating this to assistants, or managing it over the phone, with obvious degradations of control."
Most of the early corporate mobile apps have been developed internally. Mobile technology firms are developing products in anticipation of future demand, but the market for hosted or licensed solutions has yet to mature. "On the corporate mobile side, there are very few banks that have a solution yet," says Susan Feinberg, a senior research director at TowerGroup.
Like Wells, PNC has also developed its corporate mobile app in house. In PNC's case, it's a browser-based application that works on all mobile devices. While browser-based apps for both corporate and consumer mobile banking are often criticized on usability grounds, Don Jenkins, vp and senior product manager, says a browser-based solution allows the bank to retain most of the functionality while avoiding the frequent updates necessitated by the barrage of new mobile devices. "We feel people won't be doing a lot of research on the mobile device," Jenkins says. "They'll go in and look at what they need to and log off."
Among mobile tech providers, mFoundry sells corporate mobile capabilities, particularly for smaller businesses; the company is developing expanded corporate mobile technology for larger businesses. M-Com (via Fiserv) offers a browser-based corporate mobile banking solution that's currently being used by about 73 institutions; the technology includes features such as wire transfers and positive pay. Fundtech is also active in the space through its MobileAccessPlus product, the industry's first corporate mobile banking solution.
Among other tech firms, Sybase offers a corporate mobile banking product that allows banks to integrate much of what exists on their web sites into a smartphone-specific corporate banking app. The technology is now available on the iPhone, with an Android version expected later in the year. Sybase is also developing corporate iPad capabilities.
"We'll be able to incorporate a graphical interface with account positioning, cash flows and other information that you would normally get on the web," says Andy Mikesell, director of mobile commerce products for Sybase.
