Cingular is in talks with a number of banks to join the company in its effort to provide phone banking to its customers via a downloadable application. The application is currently under testing, and according to Cingular, talks with banks are encouraging thus far. If everything goes according to plan, we should see phone banking pop up on Cingular phones. In addition, the no. 1 U.S. cellular operator is also working on releasing audio and video downloadable applications with similar features.

With phone banking, you would be able to check your account balances, transfer funds and pay bills.

Honestly, I like the idea. I could definitely get used to quickly paying my bills on the go, view my account balance and whatnot. But there’s one tiny thing that concerns me: security. A lot of us lose our cell phones on occasion, and if such sensitive data is on my cell phone, could someone retrieve it? Moreover, I can imagine how a lot of crackers would try to come up with new cracks to break into security or capture data to steal my information. Call me paranoid, but I have no intention of sharing my personal financial information.

Needless to say, Cingular better be sure about the security of their phone banking software. All it will take is a single disaster for this program to lose its credibility. The application will be free, however. Cingular hopes to attract new subscribers and attain current ones with this crazy new idea.

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