Diversinet Offers Secure Vertical Mobile Banking Solution

I met and had lunch today with Lars Graf from Diversinet, a California based company specializing in mobile platform security. He demonstrated for me an amazing product named MobiSecure, part of a platform offering truly secure, mobile financial management including payments, OTP generation and even a digital safe deposit box. The downloadable application uses a locally encrypted data store and talks to a server via an encrypted channel. MobiSecure is available on just about all mobile platforms, including RIM and Symbian.

MobiSecure moves beyond mobile banking and into a comprehensive platform that allows you to manage your most personal data across multiple devices leveraging patented security technology that is licensed by RSA today. Beyond your mobile phone, you can access your data from any PC using a USB token that doesn't require driver installation. Diversinet is working towards Google health integration.

Lars showed me how he could send and receive funds using a variety of accounts and currency using an incredibly simple UI. Exchange rates were calculated for cross-currency transactions. He was also able to show me his passport information and his medical records, including his allergies and current prescriptions.

MobiSecure is brandable, allowing FIs to offer it as a fee-based service that allows customers to securely manage critical financial and personal information wherever they are. For FIs seeking to realize the real cradle-to-grave customer relationship, MobiSecure provides a valuable tool that helps to bring more of the customer under their umbrella.

Learn more at www.diversinet.com.

First Notes From the Mobile Commerce Summit

The pre-conference workshop "Mobile Marketing: How Financial Institutions Can Deploy the Newest Marketing Channel" just wrapped up. It was fairly interesting in that it focused not on the state of mobile as a marketing channel today but instead focused more on the coming mobile ecosystem that is expected to reach maturity in 2010 - 2011 time frame. Essentially in the next two years we are going to see mobile commerce explode in a big way and the FI is a central player in this. When you think about it, if done properly, the bank owns the customer relationship given that they are present at every point of sale. More on this later. Here are some general talking points from today:

• 53% of all US banks plan to offer mobile in the next 12-24 months.
• 70% of all call center call volume will be via mobile.
• 40% of gen Y feel that having a mobile option dictates their choice of cards and accounts.
• The Air Force is effectively leveraging mobile capabilities as a recruiting tool.

IBM Moving Into Mobile Payments Using RFID

IBM has partnered with a Taiwanese firm to build an Expeditor-based framework for a "wallet phone" system. A sign of great things to come in mobile banking or as my friend Mister Falcon put it "The mark of the beast"?

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/cs/LMCM-7EPJYK?OpenDocument&Site=corp&cty=en_us#