Although online banking keeps skyrocketing in popularity, access has been limited so far mostly to desktop and notebook PCs. To give users of smaller handheld devices a similar sort of Web experience, Wachovia Bank has now launched an initiative dubbed “On the Go Banking.”

Since its rollout last September, Wachovia’s new program has served up an average of 8,000 sessions per day to users of Windows Mobile and RIM devices. In peak periods, usage can soar much higher. During December, for example, holiday travelers and shoppers logged into Wachovia’s banking site for as many as 12,000 sessions daily.

The program is still only in phase 1, but mobile customers can already view and monitor their account activities, check their balances, and transfer funds between accounts, according to Ilieva Ageenko, Wachovia’s e-commerce director of emerging applications.

Services like these have long been available via voice from both cellular and landline phones, of course. But browser-based access from mobile devices can bring faster service to Web-savvy users, along with an added measure of privacy, Ageenko said.

Pointing and clicking on a mobile screen can be especially advantageous in crowded public settings such as airports and restaurants, where eavesdroppers might well be lurking within earshot. Th anks to the new initiative, Wachovia’s customers can now do their banking while on the go without shouting vocal commands such as “transfer funds” into cell phone receivers, she said.

In a business sense, Wachovia sees mobile access as a means of bolstering an existing lead in customer satisfaction, while also gaining an extra competitive edge as the bank moves into new geographic markets such as the West Coast region of the US, the Asia-Pacifi c, and Europe.

According to ComScore Networks’ latest E-Services Index, Wachovia has shown the highest Web site satisfaction of any major bank for the past two years running. For 2005, the most recent year surveyed, 73 percent of all visitors rated Wachovia’s Web site either “6” or “7” on a seven-point scale.

“Mobile banking can be a very signifi cant additional diff erentiator,” affi rmed Adam Kornak, enterprise mobility specialist in Microsoft’s Financial Services Group. “If I can do something on Wachovia’s site that I can’t do on other online banking sites, I just might switch to Wachovia.”

Demographically, Wachovia’s mobile customers represent a mix of consumers and business users. “But they do tend to be early adopters of new technologies,” Ageenko noted.

In bright and happy contrast, “On the Go Banking” is designed to work with Microsoft Windows 5 with Pocket Internet Explorer, in addition to other contemporary mobile browsers, for the display of colorful GUIs (graphical user interfaces) to roving bank customers.

Today’s faster 3G wireless networks also help to further the cause of mobile banking, according to Kenneth Jackson, a senior consultant for Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS). To promote a consistent experience across various Microsoft Mobile 5-enabled devices, Microsoft has been collaborating closely with both device makers and mobile carriers.

Wachovia’s mobile banking platform operates on top of an online banking system completed early last year through a project then codenamed Sawgrass. Running on Windows 2003 servers, the online system uses software from Corillian as an underlying infrastructure.

Wachovia has since augmented the system by developing its own patent-pending technology for recognizing smartphones and PDAs, as well as for doling out XML-based presentations geared specifi cally to various device screens.

“We’ve created a technique that allows the Web site to utilize one common set of HTML code, but with diff erent style sheets for diff erent devices,” Ageenko said. Th e bank had already innovated at the presentation layer as part of earlier work in site accessibility for people with disabilities.

“We’ve found an excellent way of creating highly accessible sites for screen readers used by the visually impaired. Yet the site can also easily and effi ciently reformat pages for wireless devices,” she said.

According to the ComScore survey, online bill payment is also on an overall rise, with 56 percent of the online banking population now paying bills over the Web.

But, said Kornak, online bill payment is still almost exclusively PC-based, except in the Asia-Pacifi c, where contactless card technology is already in widespread mobile use.

On the other hand, interest in mobile online billing is now stepping up in the US, too, pointed out Microsoft’s Jackson. Under one possible approach, MasterCard has been piloting its Pay- Pass wireless payment system with multiple mobile carriers.

“Yes. Absolutely. We are talking with banks about mobile online billing,” Jackson acknowledged.

For its own part, Wachovia is still reviewing how to reach the eventual goal of online bill payment through “On the Go Banking,” according to Ageenko. “Th e future use of contactless technology in general is also under review,” she said.

www.wachovia.com

By Jacqueline Emigh