Mobile Business Interoperability

Mobile banking services began in 1999 in European and Asian countries, and have gained rapid popularity with the significant market penetration of mobile phones, the optimally designed marketing tactics of service providers, and the increased exposure to mobile technology. Like many other mobile commerce services, mobile banking services are provided by several different entities, with which the customers of mobile banking services must interact to complete a successful mobile banking transaction, especially the mobile device provider, mobile operator, and content provider. Thus, each entity in the mobile banking cycle must assist the others to attract more customers to mobile banking. The fastest way to promote the growth of mobile banking services is mutual cooperation among the entities and innovation activities which are based on two grounds. First is value add by the service and second is interoperability and improvement.

The Figure 1 will be a simple business architecture for different participants involved, but it may change according to the model chosen.

Figure 1: Mobile banking life cycle

The bank is the main information provider and will give the brand, the “personality” and marketing status. In m-commerce the bank will assume an important role in each transaction and will have to interconnect their activities to give the user a full service interface that makes the service useful. In m-banking, the bank is the one that assumes most of the risks and for that it will ensure the security in all cases.

The mobile operator will provide the access to the banking business. It plays such as significant role that it can create difference between services disregarding the bank and will also create a complete flow of the transaction in communication grounds. Mobile operator decisions can either improve a service or make it unreliable for the user. The mobile user can get as involved with the mobile operator as it does with the bank, but still it won’t provide a complete solution but an interface.

There are two main reasons why the mobile operator plays an important role on mobile banking business.

1. It can select the communication protocol which will be the base for the user access to services.
2. It will charge the user for the connectivity of the service. Prices are important in the way the services are taken by the user. Previous mobile experiences show that an incorrect protocol or billing will impact the mobile penetration to the market and leave it out of the scope for the user.

An example for previous decisions from mobile operators that created an error was the decision of GSM and WAP for connection oriented, since the billing for the users was high compared to the value add presented. The synergy between these two players presents an important difference for the mobile banking business.

The Application Developer will remain as the person that will guarantee the correct functioning of the soft skills of m-banking. Each interface for the user will have a right behavior to the user anytime it contains easy operability and functionality. Because of this the software developer can present the innovation and determine an edge in mobile business as a full content presenter.

As per the discussion on mobile business the software involved will contain the presentation and the services. Let’s think of the painter of a new portray. Once the ink and the ground is set, the painter will show all the creativity and give life to the idea, and in mobile banking it will be the same, a good intercommunication in the bank with the user interface will increase the portability and the capabilities of the service.

The application developer as a third party vendor for mobile business can create a major and a good decision due to the fact that mobile businesses are not completely developed and the interface can give full advantages for anytime anywhere businesses but it needs a full context and not only a communication or bank context.

Application developers will have the new technology improvements at their services and constant development for services to get into the innovation key braking factor on each idea but for this, connectivity to the bank will be necessary,

All the other entities will play important but not braking key roles, as they provide support but they don’t work depending to the mobile business.