Omaha Bank Launches Person-to-Person Payments

First National Bank of Omaha one of the first banks to offer customers the ability to send payments to others directly from their cell phones.

First National Bank of Omaha has launched a person-to-person payments service to customers, based on CashEdge's POPmoney technology. Now, the bank's customers are able to send money to friends and family simply by sending an email or text message.

Americans are becoming more familiar with making direct payments from a cell phone: as of yesterday, U.S. cell phone users had donated $22 million to the Red Cross via text message to help earthquake victims in Haiti (the Red Cross's previous record was $400,000). One reason for this quick fundraising has to be the ease of payment; one simply texts the word "Haiti" to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross's effort.

The bank began offering POPmoney on January 18. The service allows bank customers to send an electronic payment directly from their online bank, by simply using the recipient's email address, mobile phone number or bank account information. The recipient of the payment can receive the funds directly into his or her bank account either at a bank that offers POPmoney, or at POPmoney.com. POPmoney includes support for text messaging, WAP and downloadable mobile applications. First National Bank of Omaha joins a handful of financial institutions nationwide that recently launched POPmoney to their customers.