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Discover Financial Services last week launched a mobile application for use with Apple Inc.'s iPhone and iPod Touch products, according to Discover. The free application, which consumers can download from Apple's online store, enables cardholders to use their Apple mobile devices to manage their accounts, including checking balances and making payments. The application likely is a branding exercise for Discover because the application itself offers nothing revolutionary, says Nick Holland, a senior analyst at Boston-based consulting firm Aite Group LLC. "It's the fashionable thing to do. If you haven't got an app out there now, someone in the marketing department will be asking why," he says. Competing card brand and issuer American Express Co. does not support an iPhone application, "but we do have many text and mobile tools to allow our cardmembers to manage their accounts," says an AmEx spokesperson, declining to say if AmEx is considering adding an iPhone app. Not having an iPhone app on the market does not hurt AmEx, says Holland. "The whole iTunes app site is flooded with mediocrity," he says. "If [AmEx is] sitting back, there is nothing lost there at all." A Discover spokesperson did not respond to a request for additional information by CardLine deadline.
