L.M. Ericsson Telephone Co. and IBM Corp. will join forces to deliver financial services over wireless networks, the two companies announced Thursday.
The companies plan to develop mobile Internet offerings aimed at allowing financial institutions to deliver advanced services including wealth management, account aggregation, mobile trading as well as credit card and payment alerts, Ericsson and IBM said in a joint statement.
Ericsson will contribute its expertise from products such as Mobile e-Pay, which enables operators to act as mobile payment and transaction providers; Safetrader, an Internet payment system developed by EHPT Sweden AB, which is jointly owned by Ericsson and Hewlett-Packard Co.; and WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) Gateway, which allows mobile phones to access Internet content.
IBM, for its part, will bring products from its WebSphere line, including WebSphere Everyplace Suite, a client/server-based development platform for enterprise and electronic commerce applications; the eServer line of business-oriented Web servers; and consulting and IT integration services.
The companies added that they are convinced IBM’s relationships with the banking industry, combined with Ericsson’s pioneering work in mobile commerce, will make their joint efforts attractive to financial services clients.
Ericsson, in Stockholm, can be reached at http://www.ericsson.com/. IBM, based in Armonk, N.Y., can be reached at http://www.ibm.com/.