Mobile News

NatWest’s mobile banking service has been developed as an extension of a successful internet strategy. Aside from banking services natwest.com already offers online share trading, interactive tools and features on financial `events’; in addition to its own branded ISP, NatWest uses a co-branded portal with Yahoo! This enables account balances and last transactions available through My Yahoo! and Yahoo! Finance. Natwest’s WAP banking service provides the ability to:

* View balance and recent transactions for NatWest accounts and credit cards registered for online banking

* Pay credit card balance or other pre-arranged bills

* Transfer funds between registered accounts.

Originally the WAP service was developed in association with Orange, yet the current service involves a deal with BT Cellnet (until 31 March 2001) whereby the registered online user receives a free WAP phone (Nokia 7110; Siemens C35; Siemens S35) and free connection to a 12 month BT Cellnet contract. Call centre support is provided for NatWest customers who need to configure a WAP phone connected to another network operator. NatWest’s trial in March 2000 conveyed the impact of banking from a user perspective.

The basic `check’ services for accessing current accounts and credit cards proved the most popular, while bill payments and loan services scored far lower. This suggests that convenience is the driver for mobile banking usage and casts doubt on the suitability of more complex services. Although high levels of satisfaction were generally noted, relevance of information (93%) scored more than ease of navigation (81%), suggesting that device functionality is still cumbersome, with drill-down menus off putting for some users. Perhaps most telling were user responses to pricing issues that have been downplayed by banks/operators due to the spate of free handset offers and exclusive bank/operator deals which have launched mobile banking services.

Interestingly, the bank is seen as the primary service provider yet the operator is expected to charge for airtime and SMS use. Typically, share dealing is the service for which consumers are most willing to pay (63%), attesting to its perceived high value-add–yet one in five users anticipate a free service. Clearly a pricing balance must be struck between services that realise the `anytime, anywhere’ functionality of m-commerce and the use of the mobile channel as an extension of online service provision (significant given the need to register via PC for NatWest mobile banking). As for mobile banking’s impact on other channels, substitution is evident among mobile users with telephone banking down from 72% to 42%–yet PC banking increased from 77% to 81%, which reveals the consonance of both electronic channels. In terms of service enhancement, user profiles relate interest in accordance with willingness to pay: 81% were fairly/very interested in share dealing while 71% were fairly/very interested in a currency ordering service. Future developments under NatWest consideration include a review of navigation and screen design, a share dealing service, ownership of the WAP gateway (increasing bank’s capacity for own brand service provision) as well as device access issues. As such, the bank predicts a development of mobile services from basic banking via more sophisticated content and increased personalisation to bluetooth-enabled m-commerce services.