It’s nice to see an operator doing something a little bit outside the standard comfort zone of messing around with text bundles and trying to figure out how to boost revenue on out of bundle minutes.

Here’s the first para from the GigaOm post:

Canadian mobile carrier Rogers has filed to become a bank under Canada’s federal Bank Act, which will allow it to pursue more mobile payment services and a “niche credit card opportunity” for consumers, a Rogers spokesman told CBC. While it may look odd at first, perhaps banking could be the next stop for carriers. They already handle a lot of payments from consumers and have long-term billing relationships with users.

via Dreams of mobile payments lead telco to try banking — Tech News and Analysis.

Very impressive.

BuzzCity placed text banners across their ad network and got 1,798 respondents. Here’s some summary results:

- 90% of mobile users have purchased either products or services using their mobile phone
- 47% of respondents did not know their bank offered mobile banking as a service
- Although 68% of purchases were related to mobile phone use (mobile content, pre-paid airtime etc.), 23% have bought from online stores, paid a bill, bought prepaid utilities and made bookings and would like the opportunity to purchase more goods such as books, music, travel services and electronic appliances
- 29% of those surveyed did not have a bank account and 56% did not have access to either a credit or debit card

Very, very interesting.

You can get a free copy of the whole report (PDF) here.

The just released it today so if you’re a LloydsTSB customer, you’ll be able to keep track of your bank account and transfer money between accounts using their dedicated mobile application.

I’ll have more details and some screenshots shortly. In fact I think we’ll put it into the MIR Show for Monday.

The bank says Los Angeles residents are the most prolific mobile bankers with most users falling into the Gen X or Gen Y bracket – two-thirds of mobile bankers are under 35 years of age. They’re also not just sticking to passive banking like checking their balances, four in ten are also paying bills with their phone.

I’d always assumed that mobile banking was a bit slow to take off because of security concerns (justified or not) around accessing cash over mobile, but it looks like it might just be a plain and simple case of the devices not being quite up to it. BoA says: “Apple iPhone, RIM Blackberry and Microsoft Windows Mobile devices are the most popular ones used by mobile banking customers.” It looks like mobile banking was just suffering along with every other website from phones that didn’t make browsing the user-friendly experience it should be.

China/Far East region will have the greatest number of users of mobile banking services, followed by Western Europe and the Indian sub-continent, says Juniper, with all the newfound enthusiasm for mobile banking stoked by better consumer confidence.

Mobile banking seems to have been on the cusp of mass take-up for a number of years in the UK but never really quite tipped over into becoming one of those every day applications. Banks themselves don’t seem to be pushing it that hard – after all, if they can’t make money off it, and it’s an additional channel to promote, support and secure, what’s in it for them? Developing economies seem to be doing much more interesting things with mobile banking than developed ones – perhaps UK banks need to look overseas for inspiration.