Citi Adds Trade Services to Corporate Mobile Banking

Citigroup (NYSE:C) announced Tuesday that it is adding components of its Trade Advisor product to its CitiDirect BE Mobile banking suite.

Trade Advisor is an online banking tool that lets companies conduct crossborder trade transactions, including updates on letters of credit, trade finance loans and documentary collection for import and export.

CitiDirect BE Mobile, launched in August as part of Citi's Global Transaction Services, lets corporate treasurers receive alerts and authorize payments pending approvals, release payments for straight-through processing, and check balances and payment statuses, among other things.

The components added to CitiDirect BE Mobile will let Citi corporate clients access trade transaction information, but it will also let their clients’ customers check information that pertains to them using just an order reference number.

“It’s a revolutionary opening up of our internal systems to external clients, or the clients of our clients,” John Ahearn, global head of trade for Citi, says.

CitiDirect BE Mobile is browser-based, and users can access it using any smartphone or tablet OS, including Apple’s (AAPL) iOS, Google’s (GOOG) Android, and Research in Motion’s (RIMM) Blackberry.

Citi has about 35,000 corporate clients using its trade products and services and conducting business in 86 countries. By opening up the trade platform to its clients’ clients, it could easily provide services to 70,000 businesses and suppliers, Ahearn says.

Citi launched CitiDirect BE Mobile in August. Since then, it has processed more than $1 billion in payment transactions, Citi said.

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