First Data Corp. announced Thursday that it would offer mobile banking and mobile commerce services in conjunction with mFoundry Inc.
Sara Bonn, the chief product and innovation officer for First Data's financial institution services unit, said the Denver company would offer the mFoundry technology as a hosted service to the 5,400 institutions that use its Star Network debit unit and to the 500 clients of FundsXpress Inc. of Austin.
FundsXpress, a provider of online banking and bill payment services, was sold to First Data in June.
First Data also plans to offer mobile connectivity to the banks and merchants for which it provides transaction processing services and to offer the capabilities abroad.
"We want to enable those institutions to offer mobile banking through the infrastructure that we already have with them," Ms. Bonn said.
Consumers would likely use mobile services first by checking account balances or the payment-due date for credit card accounts, and later might move on to more advanced activities, such as using their phones to initiate funds-transfers or making payments, she said.
The two companies have financial customers in the pipeline, some of which are expected to go live in the fourth quarter, Ms. Bonn said.
She noted that the needs of a community bank hosted by FundsXpress would differ markedly from those of, say, JPMorgan Chase & Co., with which First Data has a large merchant processing joint venture, Chase Paymentech Solutions LLC.
Ms. Bonn would not discuss any plans with Chase except to emphasize that First Data plans to take a flexible approach with its customers. "It's not one-size-fits-all."
In the long term, First Data wants to promote the use of mobile devices for making purchases at the point of sale, a capability that several banks and card companies have tested but which is still not widely used.
"Mobile payments is certainly part of our overall mobile strategy," Ms. Bonn said. "In the United States, we're not near where we need to be in terms of critical mass."
mFoundry, of Sausalito, Calif., offers its Spotlight Financial Platform as a "container" application, which banks can customize to meet their specific needs. Citigroup Inc. used the technology for the Citi Mobile service it introduced in April.
