Western Union and M-Com team up to launch a new mobile banking and money transfer service called Mobile Account-to-Cash
The service allows banking customers to transfer funds, with their mobile phones, to recipients around the world. Recipients collect their remitted funds at one of Western Union's 379,000 agent locations
(c) Mobile-Financial.com, written by Kent Mcneil, Mobile-Financial.com.
Original Article
Date Posted: Sunday, June 14, 2009 – 20:06
On May 27th at the 3rd annual mobile financial services conference in Singapore, Western Union a leader in global money-transfer services announced it had the capability to offer financial institutions its money transfer service via a mobile phone for the first time.
In support of the service Western Union has partnered with M-Com, a global leader in mobile banking, to deploy a functional pilot. The pilot includes domestic money transfer within Australia, and internationally to countries including Fiji, China, the Philippines and the USA.
The service is marketed as Mobile Account-to-Cash and continues the company's strategy to expand distribution and access channels in an effort to target new customers.
The Western Union money transfer service via online banking is already offered by financial institutions such as Canada's Scotia Bank, Malaysia's CIMB Bank and the Philippines Robinsons Bank. The mobile account-to-cash service will provide another option for customers of financial institutions and allow banking customers to complete Western Union money transfers from their mobile phone.
At the conference, Mobile-Financial.com had the opportunity to speak with Mark Strathern, Western Union's Regional Director, New Zealand & Pacific; and Stuart Christie, Marketing Strategy Manager of M-Com about the mobile account-to-cash service.
Can you tell us the objective of the pilot initiative?
"The objective of the pilot is to validate the technical and user-interface feasibility aimed at enabling banks and financial institutions to offer Western Union Money Transfer service via a mobile channel."
In your opinion what made this pilot such a success?
"Western Union money transfer service is currently available via online banking with some of our bank agents. We can utilize this same interfacing technology to make it work for Mobile Account-to-Cash. Using M-Com's BankAnywhere platform, we were able to quickly extend the common capabilities such as customer registration and management to banking and financial institutions."
What makes this service different from other Western Union services?
"We are offering banks and financial institutions another option for their customers to send money via mobile phone. Customers always enjoy both the convenience of using their own financial institution and the simplicity of the mobile phone."
So it is the mobile channel that really makes this service unique for Western Union and the financial institutions?
"Yes, this service enables a mobile access channel for banks and financial institutions to offer the Western Union service to their customers. In doing so it helps create the necessary critical mass banks and financial institutions needs to drive mobile adoption. For mobile banking to work it must be used regularly. Although the service can be offered standalone, it is our hope the service will compliment a bank's existing mobile offering. "
How exactly does this work for the individual banking customer? In terms of usage what is the user experience in the pilot?
"Users download a java application or access a mobile browser. During the pilot, the feedback received about the mobile application was very positive. Users were very impressed with the increased usability and the rich features provided by the application."
"The Mobile browser fills the functional gaps for phones that do not support java such as a blackberry. Of course individual geographies and financial institutions will drive the technology used for each opportunity; any and all access methods can be easily accommodated. "
We have already touched on some of the benefits of this service, but when you look at the overall benefits there are quite a few more, would you agree?
"Yes, the benefits can be viewed in terms of Senders, Receivers and Financial institutions. Senders can leverage their existing bank account and send funds directly from their financial institution and the mobile phone is of course very convenient for customers. Providing senders an alternative choice of sending money to friends and families."
"Receivers can enjoy access to any of the 379,000 Western Union agent locations in 200 countries and territories worldwide to collect their cash."
"Adding the Western Union money transfer service to existing mobile banking offerings, financial institutions are able to diversify their payment portfolio. This complements the existing mobile banking services by increasing the suite of services thus making the financial institutions mobile offering more interesting to the customer as well as stickier. Bottom line, Mobile Account-to-Cash offers financial institutions customers the power of choice."
"In addition to providing choice, it offers a lower cost alternative for the banks to reach customers. Helping to migrate customers from higher cost to serve channels such as branches and call centers by establishing a new payment proposition. "
With cross-border workers' remittances expected to be US$368 billion in 2009 and remittances expected to grow in 2010 to US$374 billion* coupled with the fact that more than half of the world's population have mobile phones, this service could position Western Union and their financial institution partners to capture even more market share. Only those financial institutions that have a commercial agreement with Western Union will be able to offer this service.
About Western Union
Western Union is a leading global money transfer company. Last year the company moved $67 billion through its systems. Western Union focuses on moving value primarily from developed countries into developing countries, and the Western Union brand enjoys over 90% brand recognition globally among the world's migrants. Other key assets are their central global system for processing transactions and a global agent network for cash in and cash out, consisting of 379,000 locations in over 200 countries and territories – that's five times the total worldwide locations of McDonald's, Starbucks, Citibank and Wal-Mart combined.
About M-Com
M-Com is a world leader in enabling mobile commerce through its enterprise grade mobile banking and payment platform, BankAnywhere. It is internationally recognized as having the broadest reach, largest solution-set and most comprehensive set of deployment options available to successfully take mobile banking and payment services to market. The company was established in 2000, spent its first few years developing its intellectual property then started commercially selling that IP as product. It has taken a structured approach it its growth ensuring it has a sound market position in every territory it has entered over time. This has played out so that it now has a majority share of service provision in NZ and Australia, and set to be the case in the USA.
For more information about the Mobile Financial Service conference please click here.
* Money Transfers: Riding the Storm, Aite Group, April 2009