Banking to go drives converging market growth

Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 22 April 2009 16:35

Business IT - Technology

The banking industry in the Asia Pacific region has bumped aside telecommunications companies to drive the market for mobile banking and payments, although both industries are struggling to find the right business model for satisfying revenue requirements balanced with consumer needs and expectation.

IDC’s Financial Insights research group in its latest report – Mobile Banking and Beyond – says that, in the past, mobile banking and payments were driven by telecommunication players, but now banks are taking the lead in deploying these services.
 
Financial Insights is quick to point out that this doesn’t mean, however, that telecommunication companies have been cut out of the mobile banking proposition, but that they are now partnering with telecommunication companies and other IT vendors to deploy solutions on a more equal footing.
 
The research firm also observes that mobile banking has faced its fair share of hurdles since its inception, and currently Asia/Pacific's banks and telecommunication providers are struggling to find the “most appropriate business model to balance the revenue requirements of the multiple parties involved in the value chain against the needs and expectations of consumers.”

The report does suggest that the move towards the convergence of internet and mobile banking, which are two previously separate channels, will impact not only how channel strategies are crafted in institutions but also overall customer engagement approaches.
 
Financial Insights looks at what it sees as the “most innovative and impressive mobile banking solutions” deployed in Asia/Pacific by Australia’s ANZ bank, OCBC Bank in Singapore, and Kasikornbank in Thailand, and how it believes mobile banking will evolve in the region in the near future.

Abhishek Kumar, Financial Insight’s senior research analyst, Asia/Pacific banking advisory service, says the varying levels of mobile phone technology and telecommunication infrastructure across the region make it extremely difficult to deploy one effective mobile financial solution for all countries.
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