While much of the focus in the press has been about smart phone apps, Bank of America is investing in improving its SMS text based banking capabilities used by approximately 70 percent of their mobile banking customers by introducing two-way text banking.
According to Laurie Readhead Bank of America’s eBanking chief.
“As we allow the customer to respond and react to the message, we think that can be an accelerant of adoption,” she said.
The bank has roughly 6 million customers who use mobile banking services — the largest such customer base in the country — with 850,000 signed up for BofA’s current text message banking service.
BofA has 53 million households — one out of every two in the United States — that are customers of its consumer banking division.
While commonplace in other parts of the world, consumers using phones for financial services is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. Now U.S. banks, cellphone providers and payment processing networks are all fiercely competing to develop technology that will let consumers use their smartphones, like Apple’s iPhone, to bank and to shop.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AI5GJ20101119
