Bank Technology News | April 2010
By Daniel Wolfe
Citigroup, the first major bank to evaluate mobile transfers, determined that even the people most likely to consider their phones a useful way to send money are still years away from embracing the technology. Citi quietly shuttered a two year old program in December, concluding that consumers are only starting to understand the capabilities of the increasingly sophisticated phones that are now becoming common.
"The market just isn't ready for it yet," says Jeff Semenchuk, head of Citi's new growth ventures unit. "U.S. consumers are now just getting comfortable with using their mobile phone for a lot of things." But for mobile transfers, "the demand is not yet explicit."