(keitai-l) mobile banking experience

According to statistics imode traffic related to financial services account 
for 4-6 %. Of the old banks, Sakura Bank is quite advanced in introducing 
new services for imode and internet. Those of you who do not use the imode 
browser banking service of Sakura Bank might be interesting to read my 
experiences so far.

Questions to all of you:
- If financial services make up 4-6% of the imode traffic, this must be 
huge. Does somebody have amore detailed breakdown of the usage of these 
services (ticketing, banking, stocks etc.)?
- Does somebody know how many people have registered for mobile banking 
services?
- Does somebody know more about the plans of DoCoMo and Sakura Bank? It 
seems to me that DoCoMo wants to rule the settlement of accounts using the 
mobile.

EXPERIENCES
============
Application procedure:
- To apply for the imode mobile banking service you need a bank account at 
Sakura Bank
- Through the website of Sakura Bank (Japanese only) you can ask for an 
application form
- It took Sakura Bank 5 days to send the form
- The form (Japanese only) asks for prefered passwords for logging into the 
service and for bank transfers
- After sending the application form it took 7 working days to get all 
necessary two IDs and password; Sakura Bank changed all my passwords except 
my PIN that I use at the ATM.

Using the mobile banking service:
- Before using the browser banking service, I had to register Sakura Bank's 
site in My Menue
- Connect to imode, select Sakura Banking from My Menue, select Browser 
Banking (this avoids that somebody can connect with a different mobile 
phone to Sakura Bank using your ID and passwords)
- Now input the user ID (8 characters) and the PIN you always use at the 
ATM (4 digits)
- Now you have the choice out of the following services:
	- check balance
	- check incoming and outgoing banktransfers
	- transfer money to an other bank account (also possible for future dates 
up to three months)
	- change passwords and ID
- If you want to transfer money, another password (8 characters) must be input

Costs:
Besides the imode package transfer fee, the rates for banktransfers are as 
follows:
	imode: 105 yen usagefee per banktransfer, plus 210 yen for the actual 
banktransfer
	ATM of my Sakura Bank: 105 yen per banktransfer (up to 30,000 yen), 210 
yen if more than 30,000 yen
	Different bank: 210 yen per banktransfer (up to 30,000 yen), 420 yen if 
more than 30,000 yen

Overall impression:
It is nice to have such a imode tool. However, Sakura Bank should lower the 
bank transfer fees from imode in order to make more people use it. If I 
need money, I still need to go to my local AMPM to tap money from the ATM.

Sakura Bank could also use imail to make their service more attractive. 
Would it not be nice to receive imail when you salary has been transfered?


Regards,
Arjen van Blokland

*******************************************
     Arjen van Blokland
     Tobari 950-22, Kashiwa, Chiba, 277-0008 Japan
     Tel/Fax: +81-471-392566
     Mobile: +81-90-7630-5776
     E-mail: arjen@fra.allnet.ne.jp
*******************************************
     アリエン・ヴァン・ブロックランド
　　千葉県柏市戸張950-22
     Tel/Fax: 0471-392566
　　携帯:　090-7630-5776
　　E−メール:　arjen@fra.allnet.ne.jp
******************************************* 


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