ING Direct's mobile banking apps help keep bank online-only

28.12.2010
ING Direct's mobile banking and investing system went live in July on the and other devices, and its early success has helped to reaffirm the bank's decision not to build physical banks, its CIO said recently.

"We will never build physical banks," said ING Direct CIO Rudy Wolfs in an interview. "Our cost advantage [without buildings] is great. We have great rates and virtually no fees."

ING Direct provides 36,000 no-fee ATMs in North America but has no retail buildings with bank tellers and safes. Before last summer, banking could be done via desktop computers, but with the explosion in the use of , ING Direct saw the benefit of offering mobile banking, Wolfs said.

"We're certainly a pioneer in online banking, and we'll certainly be a top player in mobile banking as consumers need to compute on different devices," Wolfs said. "We are firmly committed to using the mobile platform."

Wolfs believes that within five years, consumers generally "won't own a desktop and will just use a desktop at the office but will rely on a highly functional mobile computing device that does everything for them."

ING Direct, which has 7.5 million online banking and investing customers in North America, noticed a quick uptick of 300,000 mobile banking downloads to BlackBerries and iPhones when applications for those devices were released in July. It took a little longer to release av version for , because of the variety of Android devices. ING ShareBuilder, a mobile investing tool, went live on the platforms at about the same time.