News, Banks and internet banks

The third quarter of 2008 in Hong Kong will be marked with the introduction of the Citibank Mobile Financial Services.

According to the bank the Citibank Mobile Financial Services may be implemented irrespective of the device and network. The service is said to be specifically designed to enhance the customer experience through improved download time, increased user friendliness, and simpler navigation and interface.

Member banks of the Arkansas Community Bankers Association (ACB) will be offered a full suite of payments solutions by Heartland Payment Systems™. The ACB is a trade association engaged in serving the interests of Arkansas community banks and consists of 148 member banks with almost $50 billion in total assets. Heartland services more than 250,000 businesses nationwide.

The survey conducted by BuzzCity, which describes itself as a provider of global wireless communities and consumer services shows that a fifth of respondents made purchases using their mobile phones and over a third liked implementing money transfers via their handset.

The most popular items with customers were books, downloads and virtual gifts as well as games, movies and music.

Financial institutions in India were requested to suspend the implementation of mobile payments services until the time when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued proper operative guidelines.

The RBI reported that the bank is collecting and revising comments on m-payments following the posting of draft guidelines on its Web site last month.

The second largest commercial bank in Kuwait is offering Mobile Plus service to improve banking convenience for its customers.

The new offering Mobile Plus which represents an upgraded version of the existing Push service in fact is a menu-driven application. With the application the bank customers may use banking functions via their mobile phone.

On Monday Alabama National BanCorporation's (ANB) merchant payments business was acquired for an undisclosed amount by Moneris Solutions, one of North America's largest payment processors. The acquisition includes the servicing of 103 banking centers in the Southeast as well as the existing merchant processing portfolio. From now on all existing and future credit card processing sales and servicing functions related to ANB will be under the supervision of Moneris.

The Islamic banking services launched by Ahlibank Qatar (ABQ) proved popular with customers and brought huge revenues. Thereby ABQ is determined to promote its services on a much larger scale.

“The demand for Islamic financing services is growing due to the fact most clients feel more confident because it operates in compliance with Shariah principles,” said Bassel Gama Aly, ABQ CEO.

Beginning from today all customers of Crédit Agricole in France will be able to view their bank accounts (except securities accounts) on their iPhones.

The initiative agrees with Crédit Agricole’s policy to march in step with the technological progress thus offering its customers convenient instruments to facilitate their banking relationships.

Final approval was granted to Citigroup's banking unit in China to issue local debit cards, a step toward expanding its services to Chinese retail customers.

The first bank to get authorization to conduct local debit card business in China was the Bank of East Asia which obtained permisson earlier this year. Two more financial institutions applied for approval: HSBC and Standard Chartered.