Looking to give end users greater control of their personal information via wireless devices, InfoSpace Inc. added two services to its wireless Internet platform that will allow users to interact with various financial and e-mail accounts from a single device.
The new financial service will enable wireless devices to access personal financial information from multiple institutions at one site, with one password and user ID. Future versions will include bill presentment and payment and fund transfers between institutions, the company said.
Users who have a bank account, a credit card and various investments could view their account from a single application, the company said. The future version will add abilities like fund transfer between the accounts and bill payment.
The e-mail service has a similar function. With it, users will be able to consolidate, access and manage e-mail accounts from different providers, such as Yahoo!, AOL, Microsoft and any corporate POP3 account, also using one universal ID and password.
“We’ve found that users usually have more than one e-mail account from different providers, such as Hotmail for personal accounts and corporate mail for business-related communications,” said Naveen Jain, Info-Space chairman. “We will enable those users to access e-mail from multiple providers in one single place on their mobile devices, eliminating the need to access their e-mail providers directly at all.”
The company said such aggregation and consolidation services are necessary for wireless carriers looking to offer more value to their customers using the wireless Internet.
“Today’s wireless carriers are desperately looking for ways to roll out mobile Internet services without reducing themselves to a pipe connecting their subscribers to e-mail and information services offered under another company’s brand,” said Arun Sarin, InfoSpace chief executive officer. Both the e-mail and financial services applications allow carriers to offer the aggregation features under their own brand.
