Kennesaw State University has entered into a partnership with mobile money start-up TreasureCom Financial Holdings Inc. to develop and market banking applications for mobile phones. The school, which is located north of Atlanta, also partnered has with Microsoft Corp. to establish the lab where the mobile applications are developed.
Professors and students at the university’s new incubator, the International Center for Innovation in Technologies, will develop the mobile-phone applications, which will support such activities as receiving funds into a bank account, transferring funds to a debit card account or getting paid via a mobile phone, according to a press release.
Microsoft is providing $25,000 to create a software-development infrastructure, the Mobile Application Development Lab, staff and students will use to develop the applications. This is Microsoft’s first partnership with a university to develop mobile apps. The lab already has developed a mobile application for Windows Phone 7 and is in the process of developing apps for other platforms.
The apps will be built initially on a Windows platform and later will support other platforms such as Apple Inc.’s iPhones, Research in Motion Ltd. BlackBerry devices and phones that use Google Inc.’s Android operating system, according to the release.
“KSU is poised to become a leader in developing mobile technologies for financial transactions,” Donald Amoroso, professor of information systems at the university and executive director of the International Center for Innovation in Technologies, said in the release. “The partnerships with TreasureCom and Microsoft will provide Kennesaw State pioneering research-and-development opportunities in the emerging field of mobile banking technology.”
Kennesaw State will become a case study in how Microsoft can partner with higher education to develop services for underserved markets, Darin Travis, a Microsoft mobility strategist who works with universities and state and local governments, said in the release. “The potential for mobile banking is enormous, and Microsoft is building an extensive partner ecosystem,” he said. “We see promise in leveraging our development platform to create solutions for this industry.”
The mobile banking apps the school develops will enable cell-phone users to receive, send and spend funds. Advanced applications include using the phone as a debit card.
There is huge demand in the U.S. for online payment applications for smart phones, Solomon Negash, associate professor of information systems in the school’s Coles College of Business and faculty sponsor for the mobile application development Lab, which houses the mobile technology venture, said in the release.
“While some developing countries such as Kenya and the Philippines are advanced in using applications from mobile phones to move money around, the United States lags behind in the use of apps for mobile payments,” he said. “This venture will put KSU on the map as a leading player in mobile banking applications.”
TreasureCom, which offers products and services such as branchless banking, bill payments, remittances and prepaid debit cards, already serves markets such as India and Cameroon and is leveraging its partnership with KSU to tap into the U.S. market, Michael Treasure, TreasureCom president, founder and CEO, said in a release.
“Banks are serving their customers by using mobile phones to augment existing services, such as funds transfers, and add new services, such as paying for train tickets,” Treasure said. “Also, mobile-payment methods have been successful in reaching people with no bank accounts or with inadequate banking services.”
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