Are Mobile Controls the Next Essential Product Feature for Credit Card Accounts?

Financial institutions first started deploying mobile card controls in 2012. Since then, a couple hundred or so of financial institutions have rolled out the service to their cardholders. Success has so far gone unrecognized, partly because the early adopters have been relatively small community banks and credit unions. The future for this technology is promising though, as it can ride the waves of two of the strongest trends in banking; self-service technology and improved account security. Recent data breaches have also served as a catalyst for adoption, raising consumers’ awareness of the need for improved payment card security.

The company’s research note, Are Mobile Controls the Next Essential Product Feature for Credit Card Accounts? reviews emerging vendor solutions and explains the business opportunity for implementation.

“Implementations of card controls have so far been concentrated among debit portfolios, and a simple On/Off authorization switch has been the most utilized feature,” comments Michael Misasi, Senior Analyst, Credit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group and the primary author of the research note. “There is potentially a very significant opportunity for credit issuers to use a more comprehensive feature set to capture spend from other payment types and decrease some customer service and fraud resolution expenses.”

This note contains 13 pages and 8 figures.

Companies mentioned in this report include: Co-Op Financial Services, Diebold, First Performance, Malauzai Software, Ondot Systems, PSCU, Vantiv, and World Pass Key

Members of Mercator Advisory Group’s Credit Advisory Service have access to these reports as well as the upcoming research for the year ahead, presentations, analyst access, and other membership benefits.