As noted by numerous white papers and countless vendor presentations, there are many criteria such as application security, maturity, performance and vendor experience, which must be considered when evaluating a mobile banking solution. 

Having the opportunity to read many of these reports, I have found that there are some key criteria that are not emphasized enough.   Listed below are the topics, which I feel deserve further discussion and serious consideration when selecting a mobile banking solution from a vendor:

1. Back Office Support - Pre-built functionality to support back office business process integration such as customer relationship management and customer service support, settlement automation and financial reconciliation, business activity monitoring and reporting to decision support analysis, regulatory auditing, business performance, etc.   Having a mobile banking service offering without the ability to operationally support it will severely cripple customer support and retention objectives.

2. Technology - Support for legacy systems integration.  One of the most common challenges of a typical mobile banking deployment is the ability to expose existing core banking services to new digital channels such as the mobile device.   The reason for this is that most banks still utilize mainframe infrastructure to perform their core banking activities such as account balances, account transfers, debits and credits, etc.

3. Modularity and Scalability – The ability to align the solution to the mobile banking roll out strategy.   Typical mobile banking strategies include market introductory phases that break functionality into manageable releases, i.e. pilot phase, alert and notifications phase, transactional phase, etc.  The solution should not only offer modularity, but also be flexible to accommodate scaling licensing fees to reflect module usage.

Considering these topics when when evaluating mobile banking solutions will ensure a more complete understanding of project scope and business requirements and will surely save countless design iterations and hence dollars.

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Name: Long Van Title: Mobile Financial Services Solution Architect Company: DonRiver Inc. View Long Van's Blog