Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Rabo starts mobile phone banking in alliance with Orange and entertainment company Talpa

Planet Multimedia reports that Rabobank announced this monday that it will offer internet banking via mobile phones distributed by Rabobank. The phones come with a low fee phone bundle and allow for internet banking without the complicated Rabox (and debit-card). Rabo envisages NFC like usage of the phone as a payment instrument. As for the content part, Rabo has agreed with Talpa that they will sell video and music and soccer games via the mobile.

The historic relevance is that this is a first bank entering the telco domain. While telco's generally remain unwilling to formally enter the payments/banking domain and become a bank. An interesting game will develop here.