FirstMerit Corp. has succeeded at getting its online banking users to immediately adopt a new mobile service from the vendor Fiserv Inc.
Fiserv said Tuesday that 11% of the $14.3 billion-asset banking company's active online banking users enrolled in the Mobile Money service within the first week of offering it in early August.
FirstMerit is using a version of the mobile banking program called Mobile Money FastTrack, which allows banks to deploy the service in a short timeframe. It took the Akron, Ohio, banking company 120 days to implement the service, which now allows FirstMerit customers to conduct banking via apps for Apple Inc.'s iPhone, Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry and phones running Google Inc.'s Android operating system. It also facilitates banking by text message. The technology allows customers to view account balances, find branches and ATMs and transfer funds among FirstMerit accounts. The bank also plans to add bill-payment capabilities next month.
"We were looking for a mobile banking solution that would integrate easily with our existing systems and allow us to get up and running quickly," Julie Tutkovics, a senior vice president and chief marketing officer at FirstMerit, said in a Fiserv press release.
