Ever write a check while shopping and sweat over whether the check would clear? A growing number of banks are offering a new and fairly painless way to eliminate the guesswork.
The solution fits in your pocket.
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Cash, credit or cell?
Tapping into your bank account is just the beginning of new financial applications coming to your mobile phone.
YOUR MONEY
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, August 27, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 96 words Type of Material: Correction
Mobile banking: An article in Business on Sunday about mobile banking gave the wrong name for the chief executive of Vivotech Inc. His name is Michael Mullagh, not Hans Reisgies. It was Mullagh who said mobile banking systems should catch on by 2010 as more phones come with built-in radio-frequency mechanisms, that about 50 million credit cards equipped with radio-frequency chips have been issued and that the number of such cards should reach 80 million by the end of the year. Reisgies, to whom the comments had been attributed, is Vivotech's director of software business development.
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Eight of the 10 biggest U.S. banks now provide at least basic services on cellphones, allowing account holders to check their balances by tapping away on their tiny keypads.
Millions of U.S. consumers have signed up for mobile banking as those services grow increasingly useful. Depending on your bank, your phone and your wireless plan, you might be able to approve bill payments, transfer money and receive alerts when balances get low, all while riding the bus.
"Most consumers aren't aware that it's out there yet, but the day is coming," said Mark Schwanhausser, an analyst with Javelin Strategy & Research in Pleasanton, Calif. "Phones are ever-ready, always on and always with you, and you can't match that with a computer."
In one sign of where things are headed, Visa Inc. launched a pilot program last week with eight major banks to send text alerts to 2,000 consumers within seconds after unusual transactions. The customers could then cancel their cards before anything else happens.
All the services are handy, free -- and may be just the beginning. The banks hope that getting you used to making payments with a phone will lead to the day when you'll be happy to buy things with it, as folks already do in Japan and South Korea. Phones there act as a virtual wallet, enabling their owners to ring up purchases with a wave of their handset near a sensor.
It's still going to be a while before many people in the U.S. use phones instead of quarters to buy a can of soda from a vending machine.
But here's what you can do now and what you can reasonably expect to do in the near future.
At Bank of America, more than 1.2 million customers have signed up for mobile services since their launch in May 2007, putting that bank at the head of the pack. To use them, a customer must have a phone that can browse the Web.
The bank sees it as an extension of online banking from personal computers, said Doug Brown, senior vice president of e-commerce product development. "Anything they can see from a desktop [computer], they can see from their phone," he said.
Bank of America, Capital One and Wachovia are among the few institutions that allow transfers between bank customers.
