Thailand Financial News

KDDI Corporation and Mitsubishi-Tokyo-UFJ Bank jointly established the Mobile Net Bank Development Corporation in May, 2006 in preparation for the two companies to launch a mobile ‘New Bank’. The Development Corporation has since been formalizing the business plan, finalizing products and services, and building the required core systems for the New Bank.

Subject to approval from the appropriate authorities, KDDI, Mitsubishi-Tokyo-UFJ, and the Development Corporation have now agreed on the line-up of products and services and the commercial time frame for the New Bank, which is scheduled to open midway through this financial year.

The New Bank (Shinginko in Japanese, meaning ‘New Bank’), will offer a full line-up of financial services oriented to individual consumers, capitalizing on the strengths of the mobile phone as only a mobile carrier could do, and providing a high level of convenience and usability beyond what customers have experienced thus far. In as much, the New Bank will introduce a new era of personal consumer finance. More specifically, the New Bank will meet a wide range of individual customer needs by offering yen savings accounts, foreign currency accounts, stocks and investment funds (as broker), insurance (as distributor), card loans, credit cards, bank transfers, various settlement services, e-Money charging and other services. The New Bank will also offer services only possible through a mobile phone, such as making bank transfers to parties selected from users address books, logging-in directly from the main phone screen, and checking trading history on the phone screen. In order to ensure the safe and secure operations of all systems, products and services will roll out in several stages after business starts, with full notification and support offered customers as each product and service is introduced. –www.theasianbanker.com (April 30 2007)–