Citigroup Inc. has developed a mobile phone banking service that will be available to all account holders with debit cards.
The move, announced Monday, is a sign that Citi expects mobile banking technology to become an important, and widely used, banking channel, though executives acknowledged that they expect adoption to be widest among the more technologically savvy customers who already use online banking services.
Charles O. Prince, the New York company's chairman and chief executive, said that the Citi Mobile service "is putting the whole bank on your cell phone."
Richard K. Crone, the founder of Crone Consulting, said Citi has made a shrewd decision to focus on the broad consumer market rather than the more specialized group that uses online banking.
"They're linking this to one of their most prized customer segments — debit card holders," Mr. Crone said. "The endgame is mobile payments, but they have to start with mobile banking."
Citi plans to roll out the Citi Mobile service geographically, offering the downloadable application first to consumers in Southern California beginning this week, and to have it available nationwide by the end of the second quarter.
Ray Quinlan, Citi's president and chief executive of North American retail distribution, acknowledged that the mobile banking field has become increasingly crowded. In the past week alone there have been a half-dozen announcements from companies including Wachovia Corp. and Visa U.S.A. "Yesterday's innovation becomes today's norm," Mr. Quinlan said.
Mr. Quinlan and other Citi executives voiced high hopes for the mobile service, but would not provide any projections for consumer adoption.
The service will let customers view account information, including balances and recent transactions; transfer funds between accounts; pay bills; find branches and automated teller machines; and call customer service.
Executives said they expected to offer additional features in the future. For example, Mr. Prince said he envisioned use of the phone to authorize payments at the point of sale using near-field communications chips embedded in a phone's casing. Others said the branch locator function could be enabled to work with global positioning system technology that is increasingly available in wireless devices.
Though Citi is not confining mobile banking to users of its online banking service, customers must go online to enroll in the mobile service, providing account information along with the make and model of the device and the name of the carrier.
Mr. Crone cautioned that Citi has taken on a daunting challenge by asking users to download the application into their devices. Banks tried a similar approach in the early days of online banking, but ultimately found it difficult to maintain software running on customers' systems, he said. He noted that there are more than 2,400 handsets in use around the world today, with different carriers, operating systems, and screen displays.
Citi is "breaking new ground. The industry will watch very closely how they manage the download process, the carrier cooperation, and the device manufacturer cooperation," he said. "But if they can pull it off, well, look at the success of Apple with iTunes and the iPod."
