Third Time Could Be a Charm for BB&T in Mobile Banking

BB&T Corp. this week introduced a new mobile-banking service in which the Southeastern regional bank leaves little to chance. The bank will offer consumers three user interfaces for two-way interaction with BB&T through their cell phones or other mobile devices. And, in contrast to most banks' tech announcements, BB&T is bringing in two vendors rather than one. The interfaces are text messaging and Wireless Application Protocol, or WAP, a system that uses a phone's existing browser, both from ClairMail Inc. of Novato, Calif.; and the Spotlight client-based application from Sausalito, Calif.-based mFoundry Inc. The bank chose the three interfaces because the vendors made it possible to easily offer all three, enabling BB&T to see how well they work and how customers react to them, according to Paal C. Kaperdal, senior vice president and online channel manager at Winston-Salem, N.C.-based BB&T. “As we looked at it [in terms] of customer choice, we wanted to go with all three,” Kaperdal tells Digital Transactions News. “This is kind of the triple-play approach. By taking this approach we hope we will maximize adoption.” BB&T will offer only banking functions when the system starts its first phase in November. Bill payments are planned for a second phase set to begin in 2008's first quarter, according to David Thompson, ClairMail's vice president of marketing. BB&T expects to add mobile-payments capabilities as customer demand and market developments warrant, according to Kaperdal. The system will include communication through such channels as e-mail and text messaging. The bank could send a text alert when, for example, a checking-account balance goes below a customer-specified level or a savings-account balance rises above a preset threshold. Then the customer could transfer balances between accounts or take other action. Customers can set preferences on the kinds and frequency of the alerts, even limiting them to certain hours, according to Thompson. According to Kaperdal, ClairMail's specialty is the text-messaging and WAP-based browser banking and bill-payment functionality, while mFoundry brings to the table its browser with full online banking capabilities. Customers will need to download the mFoundry application. “They aren't competitors, they are really complementary,” he says. “There's nobody that does everything.” MFoundry chief executive Drew Sievers agrees, but adds that BB&T will access the services of both vendors through ClairMail, simplifying the bank's operational tasks. “It allows the bank to effectively have one vendor, they create one integration point,” he says. BB&T has tried mobile banking twice before, first in the late 1990s, but scrapped both efforts. Given the fast-changing nature of electronic banking and recent improvements in mobile devices' capabilities, that's a good thing, according to Kaperdal. “We are starting to see some pick-up in adoption elsewhere in the world; we think that's going to happen in the U.S. We think the time is now, more than it's ever been,” he says. “We don't have a legacy.” ClairMail's Thompson believes the ClairMail/mFoundry technologies' ability to initiate contact with the customer's mobile device will help banks strengthen their customer relationships. “For mobile banking and mobile payments to take off, the bank has to have the ability to contact the consumer, they have to have the ability to initiate that contact,” he says. BB&T considered rival technology from Firethorn Holdings LLC, but chose the ClairMail/mFoundry system because “it's a more complete solution” that the bank itself can host on its own system, Kaperdal says. Besides adding another major bank to the ranks of financial institutions rolling out mobile banking, the BB&T deal shows business is building for the market's specialty vendors. Startup mFoundry, which counts Citigroup Inc., the largest U.S. bank, among its customers, recently struck a deal with First Data Corp.'s Star EFT network (Digital Transactions News, Aug. 10). ClairMail, meanwhile, has signed deals with five of the nation's top 10 financial institutions, and is talking with others, according to Thompson. And No. 2 cell-phone network Verizon Wireless this week said Firethorn's mobile-banking software would be preloaded on many of its new phones (Digital Transactions News, Oct. 16).