Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken is to offer its European online customers the opportunity to perform all their banking and investment transactions by mobile phone.
SEB has co-operated with Ericsson to develop a full suite of interactive services that initially are tailor made for the vendor's R380 telephone. Subscribers will be able to use the handset to buy and sell shares, pay bills, and transfer funds between SEB and other bank accounts. Additional news and information services will also be made available.
"It is no longer necessary to sit down in front of a computer terminal to conduct banking transactions. Instead, customers can be sitting on a bus, on a train or waiting for a flight and make their investments or carry out other bank services," says Mona Hagelberg, SEB e-banking, private market.
SEB has placed an initial order for 5000 of the customised handsets equipped with WTLS (Wireless Transport Layer Security), which will be distributed and available for purchase nationwide through the GEAB The Phone House retail chain.
SEB currently has about 500,000 Internet banking customers in Sweden, who will be the first to access the bank's wireless offering. More than 50 per cent of all payments made through SEB are made electronically via Internet, the bank boasts. SEB says it is adding an average of 10,000 online customers monthly.
Mobile banking will gradually be introduced to SEB's 200,000 overseas Internet customers, says the Swedish bank, which recently started an online brokerage in Germany and will soon establish an online presence in the UK.