Holland's Postbank and mobile operator Telfort are preparing to distribute free pre-paid mobile phones to 500,000 Dutch consumers as part of a large-scale mobile commerce roll-out.
The initiative will provide customers with mobile access to Postbank's retail banking services, mobile operator Telfort's pre-paid call credit top-up facilities, and mobile services from Genie, BT's mobile Internet portal.
As part of the live launch, Postbank and Telfort are offering an initial 500,000 users a free, pre-configured Siemens M35i Internet enabled phone.
Postbank, in association with Macalla Software and CMG FInance, has developed a combined SMS/WAP facility to deliver banking services to customers on the move. WAP is being used to deliver secure interactive banking services in order to pay bills, transfer funds, check account balances and stock information - through a pre-configured mobile phone linking them to Postbank's core banking systems. The bank says it will add stock trading later this year.
SMS is being used to trigger and fulfil call credit prepaid top-up, alerting customers to a depletion in credit and providing a hot button facility to call in additional funds. An encrypted SMS message is automatically triggered and the Macalla software launches a series of secure instructions between Postbank's and Telfort's enterprise systems, authenticating the customer, verifying the available funds, and debiting and crediting the respective Postbank and Telfort accounts.