E-Trade Financial Corp. planned to announce today the introduction of a mobile banking and brokerage service for Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry handsets.
The New York company said that the service, which it calls the first to integrate banking and brokerage on a mobile device, uses a downloadable application that it developed in-house. The free service, E-Trade Mobile Pro, is in testing now and is to be available to all securities customers by July 1, spokeswoman Tina Martineau said.
The service lets customers view all of their E-Trade accounts on one screen; monitor real-time streaming stock and options quotes; trade equities and options, including certain conditional orders; and do brokerage and bank account fund transfers, including transfers involving other financial institutions, Ms. Martineau said.
Though much of the focus of this release — E-Trade's first major technology initiative since the credit crisis hit the company and forced top management changes in March — is on brokerage features, she said, "the product roadmap calls for full banking functionality as well."
