Companies warm up to fund transfer via m-banking
Chief financial officers and treasurers are increasingly willing to go mobile in their professional lives, “discarding decades-old methods” of transferring funds such as banker’s drafts and cheques in favour of payments executed on smartphones and tablets, says a HSBC report on Wednesday.
For instance, corporate customers have used HSBC’s mobile corporate banking platform, HSBCnet Mobile, to make a staggering $50 billion in payments. Since the launch of the first mobile banking app, banks have primarily invested in mobile innovations focused on retail banking customers. The process of checking a balance or transferring cash has become increasingly intuitive – in some instances, another person’s mobile number is all that is needed to make a payment, HSBC said.
Globally, 12 per cent of HSBCnet customers are active HSBCnet Mobile users. In comparison, 34 per cent of UK adults are estimated to use mobile banking, showing the huge potential for growth in corporate adoption.
Kee Joo Wong, regional head of global payments and cash management, said, “The world is on the brink of a new era in mobile payments which will revolutionise the way businesses operate. Since the launch of the HSBCnet Mobile app we’ve seen a marked increase in the use of smartphones and tablets by our corporate customers. At the current rate of growth, we expect to reach USD 100 billion in global payments in the next 18 months.”
Diane S Reyes, group general manager and global head of payments and cash management, HSBC, said “Mobile payments can improve the financial health of a business. Being paid faster improves a company’s liquidity and cash-flow by extending their ability to pay their own creditors faster. Improving cash-flow enables opportunities to improve credit ratings, improve credit terms and elevate a company’s reputation, all of which enable growth.”
In emerging economies, entire markets are leaping from cash and coins to mobile payments. The state of the industry 2014 report by the mobile networks association, GSMA, reveals there are 3.6 billion unique mobile subscribers worldwide and 103 million active mobile money accounts.
[“source – mydigitalfc.com”]