Bank of Montreal (BMO) has enhanced its wireless service to offer more detailed stock and index information and the ability to personalize news delivered to mobile phones or personal digital assistants (PDA’s), such as the RIM BlackBerry.
BMO said the new enhancements allow customers to receive comprehensive context around stock activity, including previous close, timing of price movements, trade volume, last trade and the trading range. Before, customers received single line information on stock prices and changes to the prices. BMO wireless customers will now able to customize news feeds from Reuters and Canadian Press.
Customers can choose and receive news coverage, tailored to their personal interests, from an extensive list of subjects, including countries, sports, industries, resources and politics, BMO said.
BMO Wireless is powered by Veev, using 724 Solutions’ financial services platform, a secure end-to-end wireless banking, brokerage, lifestyle and m-commerce solutions for financial institutions said Mark Dickelman, vice-president of m-commerce and wireless for the bank
Additional enhancements include:
- An operating platform upgrade to Sun Microsystems’ solaris operating environment, a Unix technology-based financial services platformThe addition of a range of new devices and protocols to the service, including the new generation of phones that use the wireless mark-up language (WML), a common standard used by mobile devices for content delivery.
The new information can be delivered to mobile devices using either of two messaging systems – the short message service (SMS) that sends messages to mobile phones and the short message transfer protocol (SMTP) that sends e-mail to devices like the RIM BlackBerry or PCs.
BMO Wireless provides access to banking, investment, e-commerce and lifestyle services. These services include stock trading through BMO InvestorLine direct brokerage, access to account balances and transaction details, funds transfer, bill payment, stock, mutual fund and index quotes as well as English and French newswire stories from Canadian Press and Reuters, weather reports and daily horoscopes.
Over the past year, the bank said it has entered into agreements with six new carriers, extending its service across the country on more than 40 mobile devices, including the popular RIM pager and Motorola, Samsung, Qualcomm, Audiovox, Nokia, Neopoint, and Sanyo devices.
The Bank of Montreal can be reached at http://www.bmo.com.
