FinExtra has an interesting little story about how SMS based Mobile Banking is being rolled out in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela:

Florida-based e-financial services utility TODO1 has selected application vendor Network365’s SMS platform mzone agora to deliver mobile banking services to financial institutions in Latin America.

TODO1 currently provides services for Colombian banks Bancolombia and Conavi, Venezuela-based Banco Mercantil and Banco del Pichincha in Ecuador.

The firm’s m-banking solution runs on Network365’s messaging service and delivery platform, mzone agora, which enables mobile operators, banks and other firms to build, launch and manage applications over SMS, MMS, e-mail and Wap Push.

The system will provide subscribers with banking services over mobile handsets, including fund transfers between accounts, payments to third parties, balance inquiries, daily account notifications, security alerts and cheque book requests. [FinExtra]

This is quite interisting. I know it’s not all the most advanced mobile technologies, but this should work on most current networks in Latin America. It will also provide some cool applications once the GSM/1xRTT type networks get a bit more wide spread in use.

I’m not aware of anyone providing these services in Panama as of yet, however we do have GSM/GPRS as well as CDMA 1xRTT networks here as well as 100+ banks so there would be a market.