Fiserv has teamed with a fast-rising mobile banking and payments platform player in the U.S. —New Zealand’s Mobile Commerce, or M-Com—to power it new Fiserv Mobile Money software that will allow client institutions to offer banking services via SMS texting, a browser-based offering or through a downloadable application.
Fiserv mobile banking and payments solution, which it plans to target top 200 financial institutions immediately, will be supplemented by a hosted version of the platform in mid-2009 for many of its smaller core clients.
A key feature for banks is the expansive enrollment options Fiserv brings to the table, including from the mobile device and an ATM.
"Fiserv Mobile Money helps financial institutions optimize customer relationships either through deepening existing online banking relationships or through driving offline customer relationships to a more profitable mobile banking and payments relationship," said Steve Olsen, Fiserv group president, Internet Banking and Electronic Payments.
M-Com landed its first major U.S. customer last year with Washington Mutual, which deployed a limited service that included balance queries, ATM location services and transaction summaries. M-Com also supports mobile efforts with ANZ Banking Group, Westpac Banking Corporation, Electronic Transaction Services Limited (Paymark) and GE Money.
To TowerGroup research director Virginia Garcia, the move is a “headline event” for a core systems vendor that had been viewed as a laggard in the mobile banking space. “Fiserv Mobile Money fires a competitive shot over the bow of other core banking and mobile banking/payments players—given that this new offering is now the core banking market’s only single-platform triple-play solution that combines banking and payments functionality,” Garcia said, via e-mail.
