ClairMail Extends Mobile Banking Industry Leadership With New Platform Built to Drive 100 Percent User Adoption and Deliver 1-to-1, Mobile "Conversations"

NOVATO, CA--(Marketwire - September 29, 2009) - ClairMail, Inc., the leader in mobile banking and payment solutions, today announced Version 4 of its industry leading mobile banking platform. The new platform includes cutting-edge technology designed to help financial institutions realize the strategic potential of mobile banking. 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.

ClairMail's best-of-breed solution accomplishes this by introducing:

-- Smart Client Technology Application: Combines the benefits of all three modes of mobile banking -- mobile web, client application and multi-level alerting -- into one streamlined interface, delivering a more user-friendly and enhanced customer experience;

-- Premier Content for Personalized Mobile Conversations: Contextual alerting capabilities that enable bank customers to conduct transactions, and respond to or resolve account activity within the mobile channel to optimize customer service while minimizing the cost of servicing;

-- Multi-Channel Enrollment and International Capabilities: Makes it easier for all customers, not just online banking customers, to enroll in mobile banking -- ensuring 100 percent user adoption.

Unique Smart Client Innovation Eliminates Triple-Play Confusion

ClairMail's Smart Client application represents the future of mobile banking. By combining the benefits of mobile Web, client applications and multi-level alerting into one interface, ClairMail's innovative Smart Client offers users a more integrated and streamlined mobile banking experience, thereby increasing usability and adoption. The convergence of the "triple-play" means that customers will no longer have to awkwardly jump between modes of messaging, mobile Web or client applications to conduct mobile banking activity. With ClairMail, users can receive an actionable alert and instantly respond and resolve it without ever leaving the rich interface of the smart client application.

For banks, the offering significantly decreases cost of ownership by providing a "thin-client" console for mobile web content with minimal download requirements for the user and easy application updates for the bank. This eliminates the challenges of creating, developing and supporting downloadable "fat-client" applications for millions of different handset configurations.

Premier Content and Personalization Drive Strong Customer Experience Globally

The new platform allows customers to personalize their mobile banking experience to suit their own preferences. For example, they could sign up to receive contextually relevant alerts that verify transactions, or resolve time-sensitive, account-specific issues right on the phone. The alerts can also begin mobile conversations because they give customers the ability to instantly take action on their accounts, such as transfer funds or pay a bill, or as needed, engage in more complex, multi-step conversations. By empowering customers to quickly and easily conduct transactions with its unique multi-level alerting and the triple-play convergence capabilities, the new platform optimizes the customer experience and maximizes adoption and usage, while driving customer loyalty and higher retention for the bank.

Recognizing the global importance for mobile banking deployments and the need for financial institutions to offer customized solutions in local markets worldwide, ClairMail's latest platform release supports new globalization enhancements. The latest version of the platform provides support for international phone numbers, short-codes and long codes, as well as localization capabilities for specific languages, currencies and country-specific reporting.

"We have raised the bar yet again and have set a new standard in mobile banking innovation with today's introduction of our new platform and Smart Client application," said Pete Daffern, CEO of ClairMail. "Our Smart Client will improve the customer experience because it will offer the benefits of all three modes of mobile banking -- SMS, mobile Web and application -- under one unified solution. In addition, our new multi-channel enrollment capabilities, for the first-time, allow banks to extend the reach of mobile beyond the limits of just its online banking users and make it available to 100 percent of their customer base."

Designed To Drive 100 Percent Adoption and Usage Through New Multi-Channel Enrollment

Generating exceptional customer adoption and usage is a vital ingredient in a successful mobile banking deployment -- and is a hallmark of the latest version of ClairMail's proactive mobile banking solution. For many mobile banking solutions, enrollment capabilities are limited to a financial institution's online banking customers. The problem with this approach is that online banking adoption has hit a plateau, leveling off at an average of 30-35 percent for four years running.

In order to make mobile banking services available to 100 percent of a bank's customer base, ClairMail's latest mobile banking platform offers new multi-channel enrollment capabilities that enable all bank customers to quickly and securely register for mobile banking through a variety of convenient customer touch points, including:

-- Online: Customers can sign up for mobile banking using the conventional method of enrollment via the financial institution's online banking website.

-- Call Center: The ClairMail Customer Service Representative (CSR) console allows CSRs to directly enroll customers for mobile banking when they call into the contact center.

-- Branch: Tellers can also use the CSR console to enroll new mobile banking customers at the branch.

-- Mobile Web: Customers can enroll for mobile banking directly from the mobile Web interface.

-- Smart Client: Similarly, customers will be able to directly enroll via the Smart Client application interface.

Future ClairMail Solution enhancements will include enrollment capabilities through the bank's ATM and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system.

"ClairMail and Diebold, Incorporated understand that the key to driving mainstream adoption of mobile services is making it easier for financial institutions to reach their customers at multiple touch points with services providing convenience and value," said Charles E. Ducey, Jr., senior vice president of global development and services at Diebold, which announced a strategic alliance with ClairMail in November 2008. "Finally, financial institutions can leverage the mobile platform as an interactive channel to reach all of its customers and not be restricted by the limitations of online banking."

"In the not-so-distant future, mobile banking has the potential to become as ubiquitous as online banking," said Red Gillen, Senior Analyst at Celent. "To propel mobile banking adoption, it's a necessity to look beyond basic, passive mobile banking functionality. The more successful financial institutions and mobile banking vendors will be those that leverage a larger vision for mobile banking as a way to meet strategic initiatives and actively engage both retail and commercial customers."

About ClairMail

ClairMail is the leading provider of proactive mobile solutions for banking, payment and card services, driving new levels of customer trust and loyalty, facilitating cross-sell and enabling near term, measurable cost savings. Financial institutions of all sizes can now take command of customer interactions through the use of actionable alerts, workflows and personalized touch across multiple mobile channels, all via a single integrated platform. ClairMail maximizes mobile adoption, leverage and ROI through its unified, simple approach to mobile banking -- regardless of the mix of mobile devices, carriers or back-end financial systems. Founded in 2004, ClairMail is headquartered in Novato, Calif. For more information call (415) 884-7270 or visit www.clairmail.com.

Contact Information: For media inquiries, please contact: LaunchSquad Gavin Skillman or Rachel Levine Clairmail@launchsquad.com (212) 564-3665 or (415) 625-8555