Monitise announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Clairmail for $173 million.

Currently, the combined businesses provide world-leading mobile money services to 13m registered end consumers via some of the world’s leading financial institutions such as the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, two of the largest card issuers in the US, Lloyds TSB, PNC Bank, U.S. Bank and Fifth Third Bank among others. Together the combined technology platforms process billions of transactions a year and over US$10bn of payments and transfers on a current weekly annualised basis.

ClairMail has announced a new mobile fraud management solution for banks and their customers to oversee and quickly respond to fraudulent transactions directly through the mobile channel.

ClairMail's Fraud Solution works with existing FI fraud systems and processes to help mitigate card, Direct Deposit Account (DDA), online banking and identity fraud by leveraging all the capabilities of the ubiquitous mobile device and the robust alerting and orchestration capabilities of the ClairMail platform.

mFoundry announced it has launched mDeposit Express, a "standalone mobile deposit capture solution that banks and credit unions can use to provide customers with an immediate mobile deposit solution, regardless of their current mobile banking platform."

In related mobile banking news, ClairMail announced an impressive 234% year-over-year revenue increase for 2010, along with other assorted growth statistics.

ClairMail has announced an agreement with CashEdge to provide financial institutions with connectivity to CashEdge's Popmoney through the ClairMail platform. As a result of the relationship, ClairMail customers will have the ability to provide consumers with a secure, consistent mobile banking and P2P payments experience. READ MORE »

ClairMail has announced a new Mobile Connectivity Architecture (MCA) that it says provides a "platform to help Financial Institutions (FIs) future-proof their mobile delivery channel powered offerings. In practice, MCA enables FIs to realize the potential benefits of mobile financial services, while providing custom connectivity that easily deploys expanding initiatives across all internal businesses and channels as mobile services and strategies evolve." READ MORE »

ClairMail has announced Version 4 of its mobile banking platform designed to help financial institutions realize the strategic potential of mobile banking. According to ClairMail, "this new release of the product delivers game changing capabilities in the three most critical areas of mobile banking solutions, the ability to use mobile to drive to 100% coverage of the bank's customers, the ability to proactively deliver personalized content to deepen customer engagement, and the need for a simple, yet powerful, converged customer experience to deliver comprehensive services and technology through a unified and streamlined customer interface." READ MORE »

ClairMail has announced a record number of new customers and a 200 percent year-over-year revenue increase for the second quarter ending June 2009. The company says this record quarter "continues the rapid growth trend the company has experienced in the past 12 months." READ MORE »

ClairMail has announced that the banks using its ClairMail System are experiencing "tremendous adoption and usage, with some banks getting well over 90% of mobile banking consumers signing up for and receiving bank-defined and user-defined 2-way alerts." READ MORE »

In a press release titled "ClairMail Powers Mobile Banking for State Bank & Trust", ClairMail provided some insight into consumer use of mobile banking:

The ClairMail System is seeing tremendous adoption and continued growth, with over 12 mobile banking transactions conducted every month per consumer. This is more than three times greater than the monthly transactions per consumer found in published reports from other mobile banking solutions. Moreover, ClairMail customers have seen upwards of 25 percent adoption by online banking consumers, shattering industry averages which are less than 3 percent.

ClairMail has announced the latest release of its ClairMail mobile banking system that includes a mobile web solution optimized for the Apple iPhone. The iPhone solution includes the mobile banking and payments functionality found in ClairMail's traditional mobile web offering -- account management, fund transfers, bill payments, ATM/branch locators and more -- presented on the iPhone's rich user interface. READ MORE »

ClairMail has announced that PNC Financial Services Group has expanded its mobile banking services by integrating ClairMail's mobile banking solution. Separately, ClairMail announced that its bank customers have seen "upwards of 25 percent adoption by online banking consumers." READ MORE »

Wausau Financial Systems has announced that it will debut its new solution for mobile payments, GreenPayments, at the upcoming AFP Annual Conference. WFS’ GreenPayments will provide financial institutions and corporations with the ability to accept, post and clear payments made via ClairMail’s 2-way mobile payments solution. READ MORE »

ClairMail has announced that the ClairMail QuickStart mobile banking product offering - saying it is "setting the industry standard with its rapid deployment, rich feature set and high level of bank branding." READ MORE »

ClairMail has announced that City Bank, a locally owned and operated community bank in Texas, has selected ClairMail to power its new mobile banking offering. READ MORE »

ClairMail has announced that Alerus Financial, a Midwestern-based financial services company offering banking and wealth management services, has selected ClairMail to power its new mobile banking offering – Alerus Mobile Access. READ MORE »

WAUSAU Financial Systems and ClairMail have announced an agreement to extend the mobile channel to WAUSAU's remittance processing solutions. According to the two companies, "by integrating ClairMail's Mobile Lockbox technology with its remittance processing managed service, WAUSAU will empower its customers to include payments via mobile phones as part of their receivables processing offering to their clients." READ MORE »

Fidelity National Information Services has announced the launch of a new two-way mobile banking and bill pay product suite, FIS Mobile Banking and Bill Pay. The offering supports all three modes of mobile banking -- SMS/text, mobile web and downloadable application solutions, allowing financial institutions to target different segments of their client-base with the most appropriate mobile banking solution. FIS teamed with ClairMail and mFoundry to provide the new services. READ MORE »

ClairMail has announced that Intercredit Bank, N.A., a Florida-based commercial and consumer financial institution, has selected ClairMail to power its new mobile banking offering.

ClairMail has introduced the ClairMail Event Engine, which handles 2-way actionable alerts for mobile banking and payments that enables financial institution customers to easily define and receive real-time 2-way mobile alerts for improved account management, heightened fraud prevention and innovative mobile payments.

ClairMail and mFoundry have announced a strategic partnership to offer "the industry’s most comprehensive mobile banking service that includes the “triple play” of mobile user interfaces – messaging (SMS and email), mobile web and client applications."

BB&T has announced it is the first customer of a new partnership between ClairMail and mFoundry for mobile banking and mobile payment services. BB&T said that its "three-phase rollout of the new service is set to begin next month and is expected to be completed in the first quarter when a full menu of mobile banking options will be available to BB&T clients. The services include two-way mobile messaging, mobile Web access and mobile banking applications."

VeriSign has announced that it will "integrate ClairMail's secure 2-way mobile customer interaction platform and applications with the VeriSign Mobile Banking Solution" as part of a global technology solution alliance between the two companies.

ClairMail has announced ClairMail System Release 3, calling it "the first and only platform to support the “triple play” of all three user interface types available for mobile banking and payments: messaging (SMS and email), mobile web and native client applications." READ MORE »

Javelin Strategy & Research has announced new research that it says "uncovers significant product marketing requirements for building banks' consumer usage of mobile services. While consumers are better primed for mobile banking now than they were in 2000, financial institutions (FIs) should not consider the mere availability of mobile banking a guarantee of success. FIs should prepare for measured, rather than widespread and immediate, adoption, even though consumers, handsets and mobile networks have made tremendous advancements."

The PELORUS Group has announced "M-Payments & M-Banking: The Rise of Mobile Financial Services" being held June 27 & 28, 2007 at Caesars Atlantic City. "Dedicated to defining the sweeping changes that will be triggered as mobile financial services take hold, the event will focus on why mobile payments and banking services will become entrenched so quickly, and what banks, retailers, credit card issuers and other vested concerns should be doing to prepare for - and indeed capitalize on - the phenomenon."

ClairMail has announced a strategic partnership with TELUS, a Canadian national telecommunications company, to enable retail banks, credit unions, brokerages, and credit card companies across Canada to offer mobile banking and payments services.

Netbanker's Jim Bruene reports on his reactions to yesterday's public session at the Mobile Payment Forum's Spring Member Meeting being held in San Diego - saying that "despite being a payments forum, most of the talk centered around online banking (Firethorn, ClairMail, mFoundry, Sapphire), mobile advertising (Erico), and ecommerce (eBizMobility)."

Elena Malykhina writes for InformationWeek via Bank Systems & Technology about mobile banking - and suggests that 2007 is shaping up as the year that it just might finally maybe get started. She notes Firethorn's recent announcements (CheckFree, Cingular, Synovus), PayPal Mobile's announcement earlier this year, and another service called ClairMail. She suggests banks shouldn't take too long to figure this all out - suggesting that consumers will expect their banks to support their increasingly mobile lifestyles sooner rather than later.

Novato, CA-based ClairMail, a provider of mobile phone-based customer interaction solutions, has announced that it has secured $12 million in Series B financing led by JAFCO Ventures. Previous investors Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) and Outlook Ventures also participated in the financing. Clairmail provides a mobile customer interaction system customized for retail banking that also addresses multi-factor authentication requirements.