Malauzai Leaps Forward With M-Banking Deployments
Austin-based Malauzai Software Inc. alerted Bank Innovation that it’s within weeks of several banks going live with its mobile banking platform. Already, Malauzai is live in the Apple store with one bank, Ameriana Bank, which will also be live in the Android marketplace within days.
Malauzai offers community banks “Cool SmartApps,” which are based on three main tenets: social banking, application management system, and mobile marketing. What’s unique about the m-banking platform is it allows a bank to reformat its smartphone app based on end-user segments. For example, features, as well as logos and colors, can be turned on and off for different end-users, and banks can send targeted marketing messages within the SmartApp to specific customer segments. The goal? Create a more personalized experience for the banking customer as a strategy to increase satisfaction and bank product purchases. Today, Malauzai offers SmartApps on the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry.
Beyond budding partnership news, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder Robb Gaynor also alerted Bank Innovation that Malauzai plans to roll out tablet apps in January. However, its Blackberry app might not endure.
“Blackberry has kind of fallen off a cliff,” Gaynor tells Bank Innovation. Because of plummeting usage trends, his company is toying with the idea of ending development for the Blackberry. The decision is tricky, though, as the average community bank chief executive owns a Blackberry, Gaynor says. Translation: Convincing CEOs that the device is losing relevance isn’t so easy. That pipeline decision should be made this fall, as Blackberry is planning to debut its new phones then.
“We hope they come out and support Android apps on the Blackberry,” Gaynor says.
When asked about brewing NFC technology, Gaynor says Malauzai is focused on NFC’s connection with debit cards because of its typical customers: community banks. Debit cards are bigger for community banks than credit cards, he says.
