The Future of Banking blog has a scenario for the future of mobile banking in 2020, looking at what might be possible to achieve all from the screen of your mobile phone.
2020 vision statements are fashionable, probably because the year is synonymous with perfect eyesight. And there’s a nice symmetry about the 10-year timeframe. So, here is a fictional scenario to get you thinking about where mobile banking is headed by 2020.
…Michael waved his mobile phone over the Airport Express entry gate, stepped onto the train and sat down… His phone beeped, and looking down at the screen he saw an alert from TelcoBank. “Welcome to the UK, Michael,†it said. The message went on to summarise his roaming voice and data options, as well as tell him which local bank ATMs he could use his phone at to withdraw cash from his current account without incurring charges. “Probably won’t be needing that,†he said to himself.
Coming out of the station, he decided to grab a bite to eat before heading to his hotel. In the queue at the fast food joint, pondering his order, he spoke into his phone: “Activate card for payment”.
Take a read of the rest of the scenario, and what you can see is that we’re not that far off having the technology to achieve most of this already, from contactless payments to personal finance management, it’s all availabe in one form or another, and smartphones will continue to bring all of these functions together with increasing pace.
So in 2020 this sort of mobile banking  should be the norm, not cutting edge use of the technology.
The article also looks at some of the history of mobile banking, with Natwest’s WAP site launched with the help of Orange back in 2000 – it actually makes them look innovative, and they seem to be the bank most-likely to push the use of mobiles in banking (see their iPhone app), unlike the rest of the high-street banks.
photo credit: Asim Bijarani