Sunday, July 26, 2009

MoBank's features not good enough

The problem with the architecture of the new UK mobile banking provider Mobank (www.mobank.co.uk ) is that it is based on the UK banking infrastructure. Because it is offering banking services on a realtime device, the service amplifies the shortcomings of the UK banking infrastructure. Michael, one of my friends, enrolled for the service, and linked up his debit card and added his online banking details recently. He told me that he was instantly dissatisfied as the service did not meet his expectations of a mobile banking service.

Some of the things that he was unhappy with, were:
  1. The fact that the service did not provide real-time information
  2. The limitations in terms of payment options (could not move funds to another bank account, or move funds to another telephone number, for instance)
  3. The security paradigm. A lot of information was required in order to enroll (CVV number, all his existing banks Internet logon service). What MoBank were doing with all this info was not clear. A subscriber must feel uncertain with offering all this info and Mobank suddenly becomes a target for fraudulent attacks. The service also lacks dual-factor authentication.
  4. The iPhone application was also poorly executed, with (for instance) text being able to be entered into numeric fields.
Even though the service was quite expensive (50 p per transaction and £1 per month for balance enquiries), Michael was quite prepared to pay for a service that lived up to his expectations. He said that he read MoBank's literature and was prepared for a revolution - what he got did not qualify as such.

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