financial services

Citibank Launches Citi Mobile En Espanol

mobile phone

 

Citibank has launched Citi Mobile en Espanol to enable customers who prefer to bank in Spanish to do so from their smartphones.

The Spanish-language service lets customers manage their accounts, pay bills, locate Citibank branches and connect to customer service. Citibank is the first major U.S. bank to offer mobile banking in Spanish.

Consumers will find out about the service via online marketing on Citi Web sites, says Citi Mobile Director Marylou Dowd. The company is also providing national-scale branch staff training so branch employees are educated about the service and can pass the info on to customers. Take-one flyers at branches and search-engine marketing are also being employed to increase awareness, Dowd tells Marketing Daily.

Hispanics are among the most active mobile Web users in the United States. According to a recent independent report on Wireless Internet Use from Pew Research, nearly one-half of English-speaking Hispanic consumers reported accessing the Internet via a handheld device in 2009. Of these consumers, about 29% reported going online "on a typical day" through a mobile device.

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"Almost one-quarter of Citi´s customer base are Hispanics," Dowd says. "Estimates vary for the proportion of this population that prefers to interact in Spanish rather than in English. It depends on the channel, context/situation, task."

Citi Mobile en Espanol, which has been in the works for several months, mirrors the functionality of the English-language Citi Mobile for Smartphones, Dowd says. It is accessed via the same convenient URL as the English version, www.citi.com, from any mobile device. Citi Mobile en Espanol provides easy navigation on virtually any recent device that has a mobile browser and an Internet connection. Customers sign in using the same personal User ID and password they would use on their home computer.

"Citi was the first major U.S. bank to offer online banking in Spanish in 2004," Dowd says. "Now it's once again the first to offer mobile banking in Spanish. This functions as a life-size ad -- it's tangible proof of Citi´s commitment to ensuring that customers in this important and growing segment can manage their money anytime, anywhere -- regardless of their preferred language."

Citi Mobile for Smartphones is a mobile banking application built by Citibank with support from Mobile Money Ventures, a joint venture of Citi and SK Telecom that provides mobile financial services applications globally. Citibank was the first major U.S. bank to launch a downloadable mobile banking application in 2007.

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