Firethorn Holdings L.L.C. has been a driving force behind many of the major mobile banking announcements within the past year. Recent news that chip maker Qualcomm Inc. would acquire the company has been taken as both a validation of the m-commerce space and a...
Hello! And welcome to our Thursday column, Worst of the Week. There's a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWirelessNews.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way....
Dropping vowels from the name of a wireless handset, apparently, may never die. Same with dropping names. AT&T Mobility said that the SLM (hmm . as in "Slim"?) would be on shelves Nov. 23-the day after Thanksgiving, historically the biggest single shopping day of...
THE MOBILE BANKING SPACE saw several shifts last week, as Qualcomm Inc. announced that it will acquire mobile banking company Firethorn Holdings L.L.C. for $210 million, and AT&T Mobility launched a Firethorn-supported platform that will be preloaded on its handsets starting later this year.Analysts...
Welcome to our Friday feature, Week in Review. Every Friday, RCR Wireless News runs through the major events of the past week, outlining what happened and speculating on what to look for in the coming weeks, months and years. Check below for news about...
The mobile banking space got even hotter as Qualcomm Inc. said it will shell out $210 million in cash for Firethorn Holdings L.L.C.Firethorn's technology links financial institutions and mobile network operators, allowing users to check bank balances and transfer funds from their handsets. The...
AT&T Mobility launched a mobile banking platform that will be preloaded on its handsets starting later this year. The offering is now available for download to more than 30 of the carrier's devices, which account for about 30 million wireless handsets in the market.The...
Mobile banking providers ClairMail Inc. and mFoundry announced a new partnership and their first joint customer: BB&T Corp., which operates financial centers in 11 states.The two mobile banking companies are joining forces to offer a "triple-play" of mobile banking options: messaging, mobile Web and...
Verizon Wireless is betting on Firethorn Holdings L.L.C. for its mobile banking service, and the two companies said they will work with financial institutions to educate consumers about using their phones for financial transactions. Verizon Wireless said it plans to pre-load Firethorn's mobile banking...
Mobile banking service provider Clairmail Inc. is partnering with digital infrastructure provider VeriSign Inc. to offer financial institutions multiple options for mobile banking as a managed service.The two companies made the announcement today, but said they have been working together for months and have...
The 432,000 members of Utah-based America First Credit Union soon will be able to access mobile banking and payment services via their AT&T Mobility or Verizon Wireless mobile phones.America First selected Firethorn Holdings L.L.C. and CheckFree Corp. for its mobile banking and payments service,...
Editor's Note: Welcome to Yay or Nay, a feature for RCR Wireless News' new weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. Every week we'll review a new wireless application or service from the user's point of view, with the goal of highlighting what works...
Mobile banking and payments are gathering steam in the U.S., but the space is also drawing significant interest abroad. Within recent weeks, a series of international companies have made banking-related announcements, including:-- Royal Bank of Scotland Group, which offers banking services in Europe, the...
The mobile banking and payments space continues to gather momentum, with banks exploring and announcing new services, and solutions providers forging new partnerships to enable the applications.Just within the past two months, a number of banks in the U.S. and abroad have begun marketing...
E-commerce giant First Data is teaming with mobile application developer mFoundry to offer mobile banking and payment services to wireless users.The effort will couple mFoundry's technology with First Data's network of more than 5,000 financial institutions to allow subscribers to manage their accounts and...
As banks begin to explore offering services via mobile devices, they have a number of vendors and services to choose from as they decide what might best appeal to their customers. In the case of California-based Bank of Stockton, mobile banking is seen simply...
Mobile banking company Clairmail Inc. made public its first deal with a bank last week, announcing that California-based Bank of Stockton will use the company's platform. Clairmail's system relies on text messaging to make mobile banking transactions available to the broadest possible swath of...
The mobile banking space continued to heat up as three financial institutions rolled out services for on-the-go customers.Wells Fargo & Company is targeting business customers with CEO Mobile, which delivers key treasury reports through a secure wireless Internet connection. The company plans to add...
As wireless companies and banks seek to move into mobile banking and payments, many are eyeing the global remittance market as a potential source of new revenue. However, some may find that space a bit crowded by remittance giant Western Union Holdings Inc.The company...
Financial institutions are rushing to deploy mobile banking services consumers don't appear to want, according to new figures from JupiterResearch.The market research firm found that just 8 percent of online consumers who own a mobile phone are interested in browsing on the device to...
As mobile banking and payments come further into focus, one of the potential areas for carriers to explore involves international remittances, or cross-border person-to-person transactions. Today, that market is dominated by players like Western Union, which claims more than 170,000 agent locations worldwide where...
Money was the root of all interest at the recent CTIA Wireless conference, with various announcements from companies that want to play in the mobile payments and banking space, and a great deal of buzz about the potential opportunities for banks, operators and the...
LONDON-According to a new survey from the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSM), Latin America shows one of the highest levels of mobile banking services in the world, although only 25 percent of the population in the region have bank accounts.The quarterly mobile portals survey...
NEW DELHI, India-Sri Lankan operator Celltel Lanka has launched a set of secure m-commerce services on a short message service (SMS) platform.The new service called CellWallet stores encrypted electronic information pertaining to a user's credit cards, debit cards and bank accounts, and allows a...
