Online bank makes money tweet

The US's biggest online bank ING Direct has moved on to Twitter, with Jim Kelly, chief operating officer for the $89.7 billion-asset direct bank, hosting a 'tweetup' at ING Direct last week, reports Chicago Tribune.

"People are using Twitter like it's the modern-day water cooler," Kelly said. "In some conversations, people are talking about how to save money or whether they've heard about a certain place or can trust another place, so we thought it's better to be part of the conversation than ignore it or not know what's going on."

ING Direct has 10 837 Twitter followers. That's more than any other financial services firm, according to Visible Banking, a tracker of social media trends in the financial services industry. Second is USAA, with 8 004.

Financial services provider Deutsche Bank is to replace its current technology infrastructure with a system by SAP for Banking solutions, according to Bobsguide.

According to the institution, the new IT provision should offer more flexibility and efficiency with greater standardisation applied across business processes. The new banking platform will be service-oriented and developed on modular SAP IT functions with a focus on account management, partner data, savings applications and payments, the bank explained.

Hermann-Josef Lamberti, Deutsche Bank's CEO, said: “IT is a business driver and catalyst. It ought to be flexible, cost-efficient and scalable in order to support business growth.

USAA is offering mobile banking to customers that have Google's Android-powered smartphones, says San Antonio Business Journal.

USAA introduced its Deposit@Mobile application for the Apple iPhone last year. Since then, customers have deposited more than $300 million worth of deposits using their iPhones. Now that the Deposit@Mobile application is available on Android-powered smartphones, more USAA bank customers can deposit cheques using their mobile phones.

Of USAA's 7.3 million members, more than 1.2 million of them are using mobile applications to conduct bank business. This represents an acceptance rate of 16%, which is a leading rate in the industry.