Mobile banking a global force

The widespread emergence of mobile banking is having a huge transformative effect in both developed and emerging economies, a pioneering 'mobile money' business leader said in Mumbai, India, last week, according to RealWire.

Richard Johnson, group strategy director of Monitise, said: "For the full potential of mobile banking and payments to be achieved, banks, payments networks and mobile network operators have realised that they must come together in partnership and collaboration."

This type of collaboration will revolutionise the way people manage their money, and the effects will be felt worldwide, Johnson added.

Trusteer is taking its online banking security services a step further and will start removing malware it finds trying to interfere with bank customers' financial transactions, says Bloomberg Business Week.

Until now, Trusteer's Rapport service has simply blocked this kind of malware when it was detected on PCs using the Rapport browser-based security software, which banks offer directly to their customers to prevent financial fraud.

Going forward, Trusteer's anti-malware technology will try to eradicate the threat. "There's strong demand from the banks and end-users," says Mickey Boodaei, CEO of Trusteer.

Citigroup's mobile banking software for Apple's iPhone improperly stored some users' sensitive data in hidden files on the popular devices, but the bank said it has fixed the glitch, reports Bank Systems & Technology.

Citi spokeswoman Natalie Riper said its US Citi Mobile iPhone banking program may have also saved account information on personal computers that customers hooked up to their phones.

Last week, the US lender told customers to install an upgraded version of the app, which deletes any information that may have been inappropriately saved to the iPhones or PCs. The upgrade is available from Apple's App Store or iTunes store.