All things mobile are so hot right now, and for good reason. Smartphones are quickly overtaking mobile telephony devices at breakneck speed. Remember when people talked on their mobile phones? AT&T activated 8.6 million iPhones and 10.2 million smartphones in the last quarter. Verizon iPhone activations increased by 47% in th3e past quarter. 6.2 million [...]

Last week NCR announced a partnership with uGenius that will result in a new NCR device adding real time video to the ATM experience. The new NCR APTRA Interactive Teller ATM, based on its successful SelfServ 32 platform will add hardware components such as a Speaker, photo ID scanner, signature capture device, microphone and handset [...]

This revisits an earlier blog entry comparing stated channel priorities between US and European banks. I’m encouraged by the spirited discussions it spawned. Some have been critical of bank’s slow – even flawed – approach to multichannel delivery. We agree. There are clear philosophical, generational, organizational and systems barriers to a swift and through transition [...]

I recently reviewed an Oliver Wyman report on multichannel banking among large European banks that includes the results of a survey of 30 European retail banks from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom. Taking note of relative channel priorities among survey participants, I was compelled to compare those with stated priorities among US banks [...]

Reg. E changes, the Credit Card act of 2009, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act – all have eroded banks ability to generate revenue. While the full extent of the damage this legislation has caused the industry remains to be seen, one clear implication is that banks must shed costs. For example, in a July [...]

I wanted to build on my earlier blogs about customers getting more control over their card transactions. I do think it’s a genuine trend, although I am conscious that the more you think about something, the more you tend to notice things which seem to support your argument, yet otherwise perhaps wouldn’t have caught your [...]

Two different banks in the past 30 days have come to Celent looking for help with non-branch channels, and the banks couldn’t be more different. One is a local bank in the US with a few dozen branches. The other is a global bank with operations in dozens of countries. Both are thinking about the [...]

I was one of many attending Diebold’s Integrated Services Day held on April 15 at its’ headquarters in Canton, Ohio. After 150 years of business primarily as a hardware manufacturer, Diebold last week announced that its business model is shifting away from products toward integrated services. Over the next five years, Diebold will strive to [...]

On April 1, India entered a new era in ATM banking. The Reserve Bank of India, central banking authority of India, brought about a proposal to allow the bank customers to withdraw money from ATMs of any other bank in India free of charge. Earlier, a fixed charge was levied on the customer by the [...]

Gone are the days when only the rich withdrew money from ATMs in India. India has seen exponential growth in ATMs, with a cumulative annual growth of about 70% since 2000. During 2007-2008 alone, the number of ATMs grew by 28.4%. However, there has been a clear lack of symmetry in their spread. The ATMs [...]