Mobile users prioritized by overseas financial providers

No slow down in the mobile industry

02 February 2012 | Internet banking | Ruth Janssen

In the recently developed International Internet Banking Dashboard, it became apparent that the financial providers researched are focussing on their mobile applications and / or websites.

In the last few months, ABN AMRO (The Netherlands), BNP Paribas (France), La Caixa (Spain), Lloyds TSB (UK) and Skandia (Sweden) either updated their mobile applications or made improvements to their mobile optimised website.

ABN AMRO (The Netherlands) introduced two new functionalities by which mobile phone users can easily add contacts to their address book and can schedule future payments.

Both BNP Paribas and La Caixa are focussing on the expansion of their NFC mobile payment applications, which Mapa are seeing as a growth area. Through Après Nice, BNP Paribas are now also providing contactless payment in Strasburg. In addition, BNP Paribas have released a number of new applications for iPhone and Android. They also introduced a mother application which now houses all of the banks applications in one place and provides links to download the applications.

Likewise La Caixa, Spain’s largest savings bank, recently rolled out contactless, “tap and go” payments cards and terminals across Barcelona, considered as one of the biggest deployments of the financial services technology in Europe.

Besides the iPhone application, Skandia (Sweden) integrated the Personal Financial Management tool within their Android mobile application. They are also the first Swedish Bank to launch a Windows application.

In conclusion, this update revealed that most of the researched providers are all very much involved in improving their mobile applications or mobile websites a trend we expect to continue for some time.