Huntington Plans to Keep Upgrades Coming at a Fast Clip for New Mobile Service

n

A mobile-banking application officially announced on Wednesday by Huntington Bancshares is only the start for the Columbus, Ohio-based bank. Though it is far from the first financial institution to launch mobile banking, Huntington will introduce upgrades approximately every three months, ultimately including less common features such as person-to-person payments and remote deposit capture, Jeff Dennes, director of online and mobile services, tells Digital Transactions News.

n

Dennes, who joined Huntington in September after helping to launch a popular mobile-capture application at USAA Federal Savings Bank, says the bank has “interest” in a point-of-sale payments capability, likely based on near-field communication (NFC) chips. Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc., Google Inc., and a carrier-led joint venture called Isis have launched or announced NFC-related projects in recent months.

n

The new Huntington app, available in both iPhone and Android versions, is aimed at the bank’s more than 1 million consumer customers. The iPhone version racked up more than 7,000 downloads in first 30 hours of availability and ranks 10^th the Apple Inc. App Store under the “Finance” rubric. The Android version has seen nearly 5,000 downloads. The results are exceeding expectations, Dennes says.

n

The new service allows Huntington customers to perform functions typical of mobile banking, including locating ATMs and branches. Funds transfers, balance look-ups, and bill payments require enrollment in Huntington’s online-banking service.

n

To facilitate adding versions for other devices, including those running Microsoft Windows and BlackBerry’s operating system, Huntington is using a platform from an Orlando, Fla.-based vendor called Kony Solutions that lets developers deploy apps that can work across various operating systems without the need to rewrite code for each deployment. Dennes, who evaluated Kony while he was still at USAA and says it was the only vendor he could find that offered this capability, concluded the fast-launch and cost-savings advantages of such a launch were critical. The vendor’s software, he says, was “why we were able to deploy to iPhone and Android with the same release.”

n

Now, Dennes says, the bank plans to move quickly, bringing out upgrades every quarter. “We had to get this foundational work done first,” he says.

n

As for the emergence of NFC as a likely standard for mobile POS payments, Dennes agrees it should “win out” over alternatives, such as bar codes, because it offers a “better experience” for users. NFC relies on a two-way, short-range link between handsets and POS readers to perform contactless transactions. But he cautions that recent offerings from Google and Isis are evidence that non-bank players have grown impatient with banks’ inability to come to terms with mobile carriers for commercial NFC services. “Because [NFC] has taken so long, people are going to innovate around it,” he notes. “That’s what you’re seeing with Google and Isis.”