A New Way to Transfer Cash

New company, Privier Inc., is releasing a product that will let people without bank accounts send money using ATM machines. The person sending the money would set up an account tied to their cell phone, deposit the money into an ATM from a participating financial institution, and then direct the recipient to an ATM where they can withdraw the cash using an authorization code.

Privier is touting this service as a low cost option for the "un-banked", and it could be for the un-banked that live near a participating FI (and the someone they want to send money to lives near a participating FI). It's an interesting solution and maybe it will lead to other services tied to ATMs. It certainly seems that banks and credit unions could be doing more with their ATMs and the ATM networks they belong to.

Privier Press Release

Sloooooow Online Transfers

Our new uTransfer product is suffering this same problem and we have been hearing complaints from our Indigo members. Indigo is our new online only account and the only way to get money into, or out of, it is to use uTransfer. Our hope with Indigo was to grab some people in our membership area that are intrigued by ING Direct but are wary of sending their money to a bank that has no offices in the state, let alone the Flint area. That so far has not worked so well. Most of our Indigo members are also Dort Federal members, members who have grown accustomed to our instant cross member transfers and they don't understand why it takes 3 business days to move money from one Dort account to another. We have considered turning on cross member transfers for Indigo users but are afraid it would give what are supposed to be online only members too many opportunities to walk into a branch and cut into our cost savings.

For now we are going to try to wait out the problem and maybe some time down the road look for another A2A vendor.

CUs can attract Gen Y with 'Second Life' - Really?

I'll admit to not knowing how to reach the elusive Gen Y, but I know what won't work. This won't work. A credit union island in Second Life? Let's say you've taken the time to set up a Second Life account, familiarize yourself with the interface, and started exploring. What are you looking for? Personal financial information? Second Life is a virtual world and the appeal is you can create a virtual You that does all the stuff that you can't do in the real world. Talking about fees and interest rates is not the stuff of fantasy.

Update: Here's a story about ING ending their Second Life presence that helps make my case.

Blinger - One version of the future of mobile banking...

...not a likely one, or a good one, but it is a version.

The blinger, from what I can tell, is meant to be a portable, personal ATM machine. As to how this works, and how blingnation is able to wirelessly access the ATM network, I'm clueless. From the looks of their parent site, blingnation, this may be a prototype that is years from reality or a joke. One thing is clear, though: We all need another single purpose gadget to carry around.

Skyfire brings desktop-quality browsing to your phone

Here's some support for my previous post re mobile banking. We won't have to create mobile sites for our members to access Internet banking on their phones because mobile browsers will be so good at rendering the web.

Mobile Banking

I've, for the time being at least, convinced my colleagues here at the credit union that mobile banking is not yet worth the time and expense. I know being able to access your accounts via your phone's browser or SMS is the latest next big thing but I'm not seeing it. Here are my problems with it:

• More members use our phone service than Internet banking for balance inquiries and transfers which tells me members are already using their cell phones to manage their accounts.
• Members that are likely to use mobile banking are also very likely to have quick access to a PC with high-speed Internet access and can put off whatever they need to do until they get back in front of it.
• The iPhone has shown what the next generation of phone browsers is going to look like and they aren't going to require optimized sites.

I don't think I am looking at this from the perspective an old timer fighting progress. I just think the technological advances coming for cell phones and the increasing ubiquity of high-speed Internet access make mobile banking a costly stop gap measure.