ING DIRECT is an internet bank with very good interest rates on insured savings and checking accounts. ING recently launched a mobile banking site which lets customers view balances and transactions and transfer funds between accounts using their mobile phones. The site works fairly well but has some issues.

The first problem is that when I tried the URL that ING publishes, ingdirect.com/m, my Motorola i850 reported “Could not connect to site”. I tried it in Firefox to capture the headers and found that after a couple redirects I ended up at a very long url. When I entered that gobbledygook on my handset I was able to get to the site. I’ve added the URL to the yeswap.com portal under Business/Mobile Banking so you don’t have to key it. The lesson here for would be mobile web designers is that mobile browsers don’t handle redirects very well and to avoid them if possible and test on many real handsets if you must use them.

Once I got the site up I found that the login process was not very mobile friendly. Each time you login to ING Mobile you have to enter your 8 digit customer number, answer two security questions and enter a 4 digit pin. Supposedly you can register your device which will eliminate the need to answer the security questions on future visits. The catch is that your device must support JavaScript in order to register which leaves out 90% of mobiles. JavaScript does nothing to enhance security and is only used to set and read a cookie which could have been done with the HTTP headers which almost all mobile browsers support. I’m all for security in my mobile banking but this level of security on a mobile site will seriously discourage use. A phone browser should only need to support cookies not JavaScript to register. It would also help if users could setup a user name and password on the web that they can remember rather than having to use an arbitrary 8 digit customer number.

It’s not all bad though, ING does switch the handset to numeric mode for the customer number and PIN fields and once you’re logged in the site is easy to navigate and use.

The best feature of ING DIRECT Mobile is the ATM finder which thankfully doesn’t require any login. ING doesn’t have branches or ATMs in the US, instead they contract will the Allpoint network which covers 32,000 ATM’s mostly independent ones in bars, restaurants, convenience stores and gas stations. These Allpoint ATM’s typically have rather high fees but not for ING customers who pay no fees at all. The direct url to the ATM locator is app.ingdirect.com/atmlocate/pocket.

Content: Usability:

ING DIRECT Mobile link: ingdirect.com/m

Via: netbanker.com