Every day another announcement reinforces my belief that mobile banking is here to stay, and today is no different. For those who have not heard, a recent press release is noteworthy: “mFoundry and First Data Team Up for Mobile Solutions.”  This announcement by itself is impressive; however, when you also consider the other partnerships in place, such as last November's “CheckFree and Firethorn Partner To Deliver Mobile Banking and Bill Payment Services for Financial Institutions,” you realize the true scope of what is unfolding. 

Let me step back just for a moment to frame what is taking place. As of June 2006, according to fdic.gov, there were 8,767 commercial banks and savings institutions operating within the United States. In addition, there are 8,535 credit unions, according to cuna.org, as of May 2007. This represents a total of 17,300 U.S. financial institutions. Now, let’s look at some of the figures quoted in the press releases listed above. 

According to the First Data press release, “As a component of this relationship, First Data's STAR(R) Network and mFoundry expect to offer mobile banking opportunities to more than 5,400 financial institutions.” CheckFree, which already served thousands of financial institutions itself, was just acquired by Fiserv (pending approval). When we dig into that press release we see that, “Fiserv currently serves almost 6,000 core processing clients and all top 100 banks in the U.S.”

Now, I understand that there are overlapping institutions and that not everyone will provide mobile banking; therefore, I will not attempt to estimate the number of institutions that will implement the Rich UX solution via their preferred vendor. However, I’ve worked with scores of vendors over the years and they all agree on one thing – the toughest part of signing a new institution is simply getting a foot in the door. So once you realize that Firethorn and mFoundry have literally thousands and thousands of “open doors,” you begin to see why the estimates of quick mobile banking uptake are more and more likely.