ICICI - A great leap forward
(ICICI's move towards a wireless application protocol (WAP)-based financial services architecture marks the next big idea in mobile banking)
Feb 22,2000
ICICI's move towards a wireless application protocol (WAP)-based financial services architecture marks the next big idea in mobile banking ICICI has chosen a sunrise wireless application protocol (WAP) technology for reaching out to a larger customer base.
ICICI's move towards a wireless application protocol (WAP)-based financial services architecture marks the next big idea in mobile banking or rather, e-banking. WAP represents the ultimate blend of mobile technology and the Internet.
Given the fact that there are more cellphones across the world than personal computers, there is possibly a whole new arena of text-only Internet opening up, targetted at the mobile consumer. To that extent, ICICI is surfing on the latest frontier in technology; indeed WAP banking is said to have started off in Finland only in the last quarter of 1999.
In mobile banking, users can download text messages into the cellphone's screen. This is usually a short-cut process, with a combination of keys accessing bits and pieces of pre-formatted information: like e-mail or bank accounts at the end of the day. Simply, it works like a cellphone call to a mailbox answering machine.
WAP, on the other hand, allows users full two-way interconnectivity in the Web sense. That is, users can surf the Web (text-only) from the small cellphone screen, download items of choice, and even transact operations on line.
In a way, whatever a user can do on the Web sitting in front of a computer, can be done on a cellphone with WAP-enabled features. The caveat, of course, is that at the moment available technology permits only text-based dialogue.
A Moody's Special Comment 'Online winds of change', February 2000, notes "The marriage of the Internet with advanced mobile telephony should be a very powerful ingredient for the growth of online financial services."
Though the technology is very new, and the cost of WAP-enables cell phone prohibitive at this stage, Moody's notes, "If it catches on, WAP or its successors might one day replace plastic cards. It is quite possible that mobile telephones will be the infrastructure of future person-to-person (P2P) or person-to-merchant (P2M) payments that could represent the next horizon for electronic payments.
For ICICI -- though no official confirmation is available -- the WAP thrust could mean a giant leap in its search for market share. Mobile phone services, for instance, are available only in the area of the licencee. A consumer out of the licencee's range of operations will not be able to access mobile phone banking, unless operator interconnectivity is allowed.
But the Web is everywhere, irrespective of the service provider. Banking, then, is as simple as accessing the Web but without the constraint to necessarily sit in front of a Web-enabled computer.
Additionally, as one analyst commented, WAP could get ICICI a solid foothold into its latest Internet broking venture. Banking customers need the comfort of at least a bank branch or ATM in the vicinity to deal their cash transactions. But stock market customers don't even need that. ICICI apparently has a product which offers a seamless integration between its on-line broking services, its banking arm and its depository services. This product could possibly be the single biggest beneficiary of the WAP technology.
-The Business Standard (Sec:Campus) |
