United Bank: mobile banking is a convenience for customers, not a money-maker.

• Author: Albro, Walt

United Bank in West Springfield, Mass., is the type of financial institution that embraces new things. "We pride ourselves on being a market leader in making new forms of banking technology available to our customers," says Dena M. Hall, senior vice president, marketing and community relations.

The federally chartered savings bank (assets: $1.24 billion) began mobile service for retail customers in October 2008 and, for business customers, January 2009. It was the market's first local bank to provide the technology.

United has long been a local leader in technology. In 1997, for example, United, which has 15 full-service branches, was the first local financial institution in the market to offer online banking and bill pay.

The beginning

United's involvement in mobile started when its online banking partner, Online Resources Corp. (ORCC), Chantilly, Va., gave the bank the opportunity to beta test the company's new mobile banking product, called Mobile Access. Since more than half of the bank's retail and business customers currently utilize online banking, United saw mobile as a way to further enhance the convenience of online banking and reinforce the bank's brand--which emphasizes value and service. "We jumped at the opportunity to be the first in our market to offer Mobile Access," says Hall.

The product is a downloadable software application that resides on a users' mobile device (such as a mobile phone, Blackberry, smart phone and so forth). After downloading this application using the Internet browser on their mobile device, users simply follow the set-up instructions that appear onscreen. The process usually takes only a few minutes (download speeds vary by mobile device). Once setup is complete, users enter a secure onetime activation identification (which is displayed onscreen during the setup), along with their existing Internet-banking user identification and password.

Once authentication is complete, users can view their account balances, transaction history and scheduled bill payments. They also can conduct same-day transfers, same-day and future one-time bill payments to existing merchants--and receive text messages from customer service (as well as send text message to customer service).

Users can select from a predetermined list of alerts to be...