Smartfren Develops Mobile Payment and Mobile Banking Applications

One of the things that haven’t been thought of by banking industry (and developer) is application for customer’s financial activities. Several bigger banks provide m-banking (via SMS) and internet banking (plus its mobile version) service, but to complement the available function, there should be banking application – for Blackberry and iPhone platform, for example – as solution.

Previously I found out that there’s an application developed by PermataBank in Blackberry platform. Unfortunately, the application is "a pseudo one". Each transaction conducted with it will be sent through SMS, not thorough data connection. Which means this application is some kind of launcher for m-banking via SMS activity. Resulting every activity or transaction will be deducted from phone’s credit, and will happen fast, because such special SMS will be charged Rp. 500 per SMS sent.

Smartfren, combination between Smart Telecom and Mobile-8 (Fren), start to bridge this gap by launching Smartfren Mobileplay. Collaborates with Bank Sinarmas, one of its sister companies, they provide Blackberry application which can be used for two important activities, credit refill and sending credit to fellow Smartfren users, also banking activity in Bank Sinarmas namely balance checking, checking history of the last three transactions, and fund transfer to fellow users of MobilePay (Bank Sinarmas). This application also accommodate phone credit seller.

Smartfren users can point their Blackberry users to http://mobilepay.smartfren.com/bb/. Step-by-step manual is available here. Make sure you have Rp 5.000 credit at least after transaction if you want to send credit. This application is available for handset model Tour 9630, Curve with OS 4.5 and 5.0, and Storm 9530 (and 9550). Setting menu is also available in the application to change PIN, reset PIN, language choice, and password reset.

Other bank users may expect to have similar application available on their smart phone platform, but seems unlikely to be in the near future. One advice on the development is that in the future it can also accommodate other transactions such as electric, water, telephone, credit card bill payment, and other banking transaction.

Indeed it is somewhat unfortunate that in some neighboring countries such banking applications are quite popular. Do you think the banks need to create banking application for financial activity or m-banking via SMS is suitable enough?

Translated by: Nita Sellya.