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PSCU Financial Services, a credit-union service organization, soon will begin reselling mobile-banking services to its 1,100 member credit unions. The mBanking service is part of a marketing effort to encourage more young consumers to join credit unions.
"Our surveys and other surveys show 40% to 50% of Generation Y members are looking for financial institutions that offer mobile-banking services," Doug Lokrantz, PSCU mobile-banking services manager, tells ATM&Debit News.
Some 76 million individuals fall into that age group, which includes consumers born between 1976 and 2000, say demographers.
PSCU completed a pilot last year during which it offered mobile-banking services to PSCU members. The St. Petersburg, Fla.-based organization will roll out mBanking within a month, Lokrantz says.
More than 600 credit unions representing some 13 million accounts and subscribers own PSCU.
To help launch the service, PSCU signed an agreement to resell an applet from Sausalito, Calif.-based mFoundry Inc. that enables cell-phone users to download mobile-banking applications onto their phones.
PSCU also will offer a wireless application protocol, which PSCU developed internally, for credit-union members.
The protocol uses a cell phone's Web browser to access a credit union's mBanking service via the Internet, Lokrantz says.
PSCU will offer the mobile-banking service to credit unions that buy one or both of the mobile-banking products for members.
Initially, both services will enable cell-phone users to transfer funds between same-bank accounts and to monitor checking and savings-account balances.
PSCU later will provide member credit unions' customers access to prepaid, credit card and bill-payment accounts, Lokrantz says. ATM
