HSBC Sees Significant Rise in Corporate Mobile Banking

New Delhi: Corporates are increasingly using mobile banking, according to HSBC, and it expects global payments through its mobile banking platform to touch $100 billion in the next 18 months.

As per financial services major HSBC, corporate customers like Chief Financial Officers and Treasurers are increasingly going mobile, discarding decades-old methods of transferring funds such as banker's drafts and cheques in favour of payments executed on smartphones and tablets.

"Since the launch of the HSBCnet Mobile app, we've seen a marked increase in the use of smartphones and tablets by our corporate customers. At the current rate of growth, we expect to reach $100 billion in global payments in the next 18 months," HSBC regional head of global payments and cash management Kee Joo Wong said.

Beyond the convenience of being able to check account balances, authorise payments and receive payment alerts on the go, mobile banking has the potential to introduce entirely new ways of doing business and generate vast quantities of valuable information about a company's operations that were previously unattainable.

"Mobile payments can improve the financial health of a business. Being paid faster improves a company's liquidity and cash-flow by extending their ability to pay their own creditors faster," HSBC Group general manager and global head of payments and cash management Diane S Reyes said.

Mobile payments could have a big impact on doing business internationally. Posting a cheque, for example, is inefficient, while mobile-to-mobile payment between the two parties removes several unnecessary steps.