The Toronto Star is reporting today that on Tuesday, the Interac Association and Acxsys Corporation announced the expansion of the options available to customers to transfer money to include something new - SMS (text message) money transfers. Redubbing the transfer type formerly known as Interac Email Money Transfer to be more inclusive to the new option the service is now called Interac e-Transfer. The new service will allow customers to be notified by text message when money is being transferred to them.

In a statement in an article in Wednesday’s Toronto Star Mark O’Connell, president and CEO of Acxsys Corp. and Interac Association said, “By expanding Interac e-Transfer into the mobile space, we are giving consumers more flexibility to make person-to-person payments quickly and securely.”

Also according to The Star, two credit unions are the first in Canada to offer this new functionality of the e-Transfer product, Prospera Credit Union in British Columbia and Teachers Credit Union in Ontario. Before this announcement and product launch on Tuesday, Canadians who had mobile internet on their phones could browse to a bank’s website and perform a money transfer as if they were on their computers or even download an app from their bank (which still required access to the internet but gave everything a nicer format), if they had a smartphone and their bank had an app released for their platform.

A Flash video demo on the Teachers’ Credit Union site explains how this new service works and I have written out the details below:

Ben wants to send money to Sandra. Ben logs onto his mobile banking on his smart phone and selects “Interac e-Transfer” and then “Send Money” and then chooses or adds a recipient. Ben enters the amount to be sent, selects the account, chooses if he is sending the money to Sandra by her email address or mobile phone number or both and confirms the transaction. About 30 minutes later, Sandra receives an email or text message or both notifying her that the funds are available. Once she answers a security question, the funds are deposited into her account. She does not have to be a customer of the same financial institution.

This works much the way Email Money Transfers worked beforehand with the added twist of the option to use a cellphone number to send a text message to for notification instead of it coming via email.

Oscar van der Meer, CTO for Central 1 Credit Union (associated with Prospera), said that “[o]nly a third of the 22 million wireless accounts in Canada are attached to smart phones such as the BlackBerry or iPhone, that means there are a lot more people who could benefit from a service that can be retrieved with a text message.” According to Interac, “You can deposit your transfer by clicking on the link contained in the text message…, or you can type the link contained in the notification into your browser — no matter how you’re notified, you can deposit your transfer at any computer or mobile device connected to the Internet.”

At the outset, I thought this sounded very cool and useful. However, now that I am thinking about it as I write this post I have begun to question the service’s usefulness especially for the two thirds of Canadians wireless accounts which are not attached to smart phones targeted to benefit, according to Mr. van der Meer, from this service. Consider, if I receive an e-Transfer via text message to my phone with no internet access how does that help me? I still have to go out and find a computer or someone with a mobile device that has internet access. Why can’t my friend who is transferring me the money send it via email and then text me (or call me) themselves that they’ve sent me the e-Transfer to my email. What does getting the e-Transfer notification to my non-internet enabled phone help me any more than receiving it to my email. In both cases I can’t access the money until I get to a device that has internet access. The only ‘benefit’ is I know it is there without my friend calling me or texting me themselves to let me know.

If you think I am seeing this completely wrong and there’s a huge benefit to this new service which I am completely overlooking, please do let me know in the comments below.

For More Info On the new e-Transfer

Toronto Star Moneyville Article [LINK]

Interac e-Transfer Product Page [LINK]

Interac e-Transfer FAQ [LINK]

Teachers Credit Union Interac e-Transfer page [LINK]

Tweet