SAN FRANCISCO-Charles Schwab Corp., San Francisco, plans to offer customers who trade securities more than 48 times each year access to this service over their pagers, mobile phones or handheld computers by Dec. 31.
Schwab has 2.8 million active online accounts with $251 billion in assets.
Fidelity Investments’ brokerage unit and Discover Brokerage, which is part of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, already have made wireless trading available to their customers. Aether Technologies, a privately held firm that is Discover’s partner in its trading and information service, also will work with Schwab to develop its version of this offering.
In announcing its new plans, Schwab said it has established a new research and development department within its technology group to create wireless applications. The company also said it will join the Wireless Application Protocol Forum, a group of large communications and computer companies like AT&T Corp. and Microsoft Corp. that has set standards for data services.
