2012 in Mobile Banking
June 8, 2012 10:53 AM
PayPal
The online payments giant is moving fast into mobile. It announced over a dozen merchant partnerships for point of sale payments and it also began offering a clip-on card reader for smartphones.
PNC and U.S. Bank
U.S. Bank began testing an augmented reality app this year. The technology adds information such as branch locations over the images captured through the phone's camera. PNC launched a similar app at the end of last year.
Google has had its ups and downs: It acquired the prepaid card processor TxVia this year to boost its mobile payments strategy, but it also had to calm fears around a security flaw tied to its digital wallet's stored-value account.
Isis
The carrier-backed mobile payments venture, once viewed as a rival to banks, is working hard to cast itself as an ally. This year it convinced JPMorgan Chase, Capital One and American Express to support its mobile wallet.
Citigroup
Citi has placed greater emphasis on the iPad as a customer service channel distinct from online and smartphone-based banking. It finds people are more eager to read information using an iPad than they are using a desktop computer.
E-Trade
The online bank and brokerage added a voice-control feature to its app to allow customers to more easily set up complex transactions.
SmartyPig
To advance, a company sometimes must abandon a mobile feature that doesn't work out. SmartyPig ditched its location-based offers for a more traditional rewards structure. Experts say larger companies might have an easier time building scale.
Shopkick
The world wasn't built with mobile devices in mind. To make its smartphone-based rewards system more appealing to merchants, shopkick redesigned its app to make sure its technology works even when thick retail store walls block cellular signals.
