Mobile Banking - The Future of Credit Unions

Today a mobile phone is an expression of life. It serves its owner in various ways but none of them is more important than the mobile banking function provided by almost all carriers today. Credit unions have already started gearing up for the digitised age by empowering their customers so that banking becomes easier, quicker and foolproof through the mobile phone. Experience Mobile Banking - the bank is in your hands now.

Mobile banking is also known as M-Banking, mbanking, SMS Banking etc. It is an umbrella term used for performing balance checks, account transactions, payments etc. via a mobile device such as a mobile phone. Mobile banking today is most often performed via SMS or the mobile internet In some cases, a bank customer interested in doing a mobile banking transaction has to download special clients for the same.

Credit unions are an important part of an economy's retail finance plan. A credit union is a cooperative financial institution that is owned and controlled by its members, and operated for the purpose of promoting thrift, providing credit at reasonable rates, and providing other financial services to its members. Many credit unions exist to further community development or sustainable international development on a local level. A credit union may be on a miniscule (volunteer operations) as well as a large scale. Big credit unions have members running into millions and several billion dollars of money.

Technology is an all-encompassing idea today and credit unions have jumped on the bandwagon too. Most credit unions around the globe now provide mobile

banking facility to their customers so that they can perform important financial transactions on the run. This is obviously great news for their customers who often find themselves in difficult situations when they have to transfer money urgently and cannot access a bank or credit union. The few credit unions that have not warmed to mobile banking are reportedly planning to do it within a time frame of two years. This hugely positive upward trend is expected to continue in the near future.

Currently, credit unions are split between adoption of WAP/browser-based mobile banking programs and SMS/Text messaging programs. A very small number of credit unions require their customer to download some sort of software, but adoption of this technology may increase as more and more mobile companies implement pre-loaded software on their mobile phone options which are meant to be used for mobile banking.

There are many technological issues that a credit union needs to consider when selecting a suitable solution for its mobile banking operations. The mobile banking gateway must be absolutely secure from fraud and there should be multi-factor and multi-level authentication. Any mobile banking system must be compatible with the other media of banking like the online option, as well with the eminent local mobile carriers. The transaction capabilities of a mobile banking system should fulfill the needs of the customer.