NEW ORLEANS — Banks intent on bringing mobile payments to a wide swath of customers will soon have to make difficult decisions about devices, partnerships, vendor management and employee training.
"It's never been more important to have an integrated view across the enterprise," said Titi Cole, payments and solutions executive at Bank of America Corp.
Cole was part of a diverse roster of bank executives here at the Mobile Banking and Emerging Applications Summit, hosted by SourceMedia Inc., the publisher of American Banker.
Bank of America is pursuing mobile payments on a number of fronts, including clearXchange, a cooperative person-to-person payments venture that is recruiting bank partners.
As new mobile services are deployed, the Charlotte, N.C., company is trying to ensure consistency in customer experience across all channels.
"Customers don't see Bank of America mobile or Bank of America branches," Cole said. "They just see Bank of America."
When disparate payments systems do not work together seamlessly, the customer notices and doesn't see value.
As a result, Cole said, banks will have to adjust to a new view of competition that embraces some cooperation in the name of interoperability.
That means striking partnerships with banks, telecoms and other stakeholders in the payments chain.
"There needs to be a consistent payments infrastructure with a standard experience in protocols because of the ease of use of plastic," Cole said.
Sharing the mobile payments market with telecoms can be beneficial to banks, which can leverage their experience in serving clients in other channels to drive adoption, Cole said.
A number of initiatives now under way aim to build an interoperable payments network, such as the telecom venture Isis — from AT&T Inc., T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless — and similar efforts by Google Inc.
These ventures are at an early stage, however, and a clear path to a marketwide network has yet to emerge.
But Ginger Schmeltzer, a senior vice president at SunTrust Banks Inc. of Atlanta, said the development of a payments ecosystem that relies on near-field communication technology is getting closer, particularly given the publicity surrounding NFC initiatives.
"Consumers are becoming more aware of mobile payments," Schmeltzer said.
Other bankers said the success of a rollout of a mobile payment program can depend on bank employees' level of familiarity with mobile payment systems. That includes branch employees.
"We want to make sure employees are up to speed," said Dan Marks, chief marketing officer of First Horizon National Corp.'s First Tennessee Bank.
The bank recently rolled out several mobile services, including an app for corporate mobile users.
"We want to make sure each branch has a mobile user before we launch," Marks said.
