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Net.Finance 2008 – Retail Mobile Banking at Wells Fargo: Eskander Matta, Senior Vice President, Internet Services

Mobile phone penetration in the US is now 95%+ and data plan penetration is now 50%+

Modalities:                             Usage   Capable phones
Texting                                        50%     100%
Mobile Browser,                         25%      >60%
Downloadable Application        17%      >60%

Application download cons are pretty significant – carrier control, downloading, device management, etc

Browser cons – sign-on, complex navigation, lack of awareness

SMS text message cons – Simplistic UI, Security, Plain Text

Distributing services in the mobile ecosystem requires a highly complex series of relationships.

Wells Fargo and external research shows that there is adoption interest.

Most frequent uses presently: checking balances, fund transfers and activity monitoring

Browser usage presently 2.5 times per week, 66% active users (last three months)

Text banking – 83% of all mobile banking enrollees are including the text banking service. Sending 19 text messages a month overall, becoming more engaged with the accounts overall.

Mobile Contactless Pilot with Visa…

Mobile delivers strategically – when, where, why and how?

What is the potential value?
Customer retention, reducing servicing costs by controlling call center calls, reduced risk and fraud, customer acquisition and usage revenue (P2P, Panic Play, Mobile Contactless, etc)

Security order: SMS, Browser, Application

Mobile customers slant towards a desirable demographic overall due to the very fact they are heavy mobile users.

Future state is for SMS, application and browser to be ubiquitous and the three will be tightly integrated.

Well Fargo is trying to build usage of the channel, not charging for the service at this time. Getting techno-savvy users so servicing has been minimal.

Reaction: I’m highly impressed with the full deployment of SMS, Browser and Application download models as they will be fully able to determine which best meets customer needs based on actual usage data. I chatted up Eskander afterwards and he’s a joy to speak to.

1 thought on “Net.Finance 2008 – Retail Mobile Banking at Wells Fargo: Eskander Matta, Senior Vice President, Internet Services

  1. […] once in a lifetime opportunity. I saw 4 companies give presentations on their business cases on mobile retail banking and they all focused on the reduction of call center! Think about that a second, moving things from […]

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