Approach to mobile banking in foreign lands foretells its future in the U.S.

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Consumers in many countries outside of the United States have greater access to technology that enables them to engage in mobile banking. Looking at how these foreign consumers use mobile banking provides some important clues as to how this service will unfold in the United States, according to Mark Watson, cofounder and chief executive officer at Volantis, which has its U.S. office in Seattle.

One of the main challenges in providing a usable mobile banking experience lies within the mobile devices themselves. Computer programmers rely on specific standards to work with, since issues such as screen resolutions, operating systems and browsers are well defined and established for PCs. The mobile phone industry, however, has no such standards. There are many different sizes, shapes and complexities to mobile phones. And perhaps most important is the need for secure transactions. In the past, banks tried to accomplish this goal by certifying only specific handsets that support secure connections. This solution provided only limited success, as it forced customers to use a phone determined by the banks.

Many banks overseas have worked out these challenges by employing Intelligent Content Adaptation, and then using technology from Volantis Systems to deliver the properly formatted content to each individual device on the market, enabling secure banking transactions, according to Watson. (Volantis uses a database of over 5,200 mobile devices to make the system work.) The technology automatically identifies which devices are secure and offer all, some or no services, as appropriate.

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