US Bank, the fifth-largest commercial bank in the nation, is to launch person-to-person mobile payments to customers later this year through a partnership with CashEdge.
The bank says it will offer CashEdge's Popmoney service to its mobile banking customers through usbank.com and the downloadable mobile banking application, the US Bank Mobile Wallet.
Users will be able to send money directly from their bank account to anyone with an email address, mobile phone number and a bank account.
Meheriar Hasan, head of the Internet and mobile channel at US Bank, says: "US Bank is committed to the mobile channel, and meeting the emerging needs of our rapidly growing mobile customer base."
US Bank is currently pouring investment into the mobile service delivery channel. At a mobile summit in Las Veags earlier this week, the bank previewed a soon-to-luanch "mobile concierge" service developed in association with Infosys, which will use GPS technology to send targetted coupons to shoppers in retail locations.
It is also working with a host of other vendors to develop new applications for the mobile space, including Visa, Monitise, DeviceFidelity, Firethorn and CashEdge.
For its part, CashEdge claims to have five other banks already committed to the Popmoney concept with a further 165 in the pipeline.
Neil Platt, SVP and general manager US banking, Cash Edge, says: "For current CashEdge clients, Popmoney is a simple upgrade of their existing TransferNow service."
Money transferred via the Popmoney application are processed through the national automated clearing house network and typically take a day to arrive in recipient accounts.
CashEdge is one of clutch of firms pushing its banking clients into the person-to-person payments space in the US markets.
According to recent research sponsored by Fis, PayPal and Nacha, nearly half of Americans that bank online are interested in using electronic P2P payments.