Ulster Bank unveils first free mobile banking app

23 Sep 2010

Ulster Bank has launched the first free mobile banking app in Ireland for the iPhone. Available to download from the App Store on iTunes, the new app is designed to make mobile banking more convenient for Ulster Bank’s personal banking customers nationwide.

The Ulster Bank App’s features include up-to-the-minute account balance checks and mini statements showing customers’ last six transactions. Other helpful features include a text alert service, which notifies customers when their account is close to being overdrawn. The text messages are designed to help customers manage their money better and enable them to take action so as to avoid unnecessary charges.

The new app is the latest in a series of initiatives introduced by Ulster Bank, including 15 new customer commitments, extended opening hours and Saturday branch openings, to help make banking services more accessible in a manner in keeping with customers’ lifestyles and needs.

The iPhone app is yet another convenient way for customers to bank with Ulster Bank. Ulster Bank’s online service, ‘Anytime’, is now in its 10th year with more than 875,000 transactions per week carried out online. There are even two mobile units that serve rural communities, where branch banking is otherwise unavailable.

The bank plans to extend these text services to other mobile handsets later in the year.

“Earlier this year, we asked our customers about the product and service improvements they’d most like to see from Ulster Bank,” Glynis Hobson, head of Direct Banking, explained.

“When customers told us that they would value a text service which would help them avoid being overdrawn on their account, we decided to make that a reality with a new iPhone app. This means our customers can take action to avoid unnecessary charges.”

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com