Chinese Banking Customers Get Mobile

The Shanghai branch of China’s Bank of Communications (BOC) has teamed with Hong Kong-based Cyber On-Air to enable its customers to access their bank account details and conduct financial transactions from their WAP-enabled mobile phones.

The recently launched Banking On-Air wireless Internet solution combines SMS and WAP gateways with software applications, enabling users to check bank balances, access account details, conduct forex transactions and effect funds transfers.

“This perfect integration of WAP and SMS provides Bank of Communications Shanghai’s customers with real-time information at any time. We are really pleased at how successful the partnership has been and are looking forward to further developments of wireless Internet applications,” said Ricky Choi, chief executive officer of Cyber On-Air, which has offices in Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai, and a business network in most of China’s key provinces.

Cyber On-Air had partnered with Singapore-headquartered EdgeMatrix and processor giant Intel to introduce to the Mainland market its turnkey Banking On-Air solution, said to be the first wireless Internet application offering available to the country’s financial industry.

EdgeMatrix, a provider of multi-channel communications and commerce infrastructure, collaborated with Cyber On-Air to build a scalable and secure wireless banking solution using EdgeMatrix’s multi-channel communications server Xgate and Cyber On-Air’s Banking On-Air mobile commerce application. The Linux-based solution runs on the Intel platform.

Company officials said Banking On-Air provides a highly secure wireless Internet environment as the solution uses end-to-end 56/128 wireless transport layer security (WTLS) encryption — facilitated by Xgate — to enhance security.

Xgate has enabled Bank of America to launch Hong Kong’s first wireless banking service; it has also been deployed last August in the first WAP stock trading network in China, a network comprising more than 100 PRC securities trading houses.

“We are pleased to work hand in hand with EdgeMatrix, a leader in the multi-channel communications and commerce space. Its vision to ‘gel’ disparate channels and diverse devices to work in concert, in order to facilitate communications and commerce regardless of time or location, is becoming more relevant in China. Our close partnership has resulted in innovative offerings to Bank of Communications Shanghai, which is a customer that is forward looking,” Choi added.

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to our newsletter.

Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis

News Around the Web