BT and BT Cellnet today announced its strategic partnership with Halifax Group Plc to provide banking capabilities for use on the Internet, interactive TV, mobile phones and other mobile devices that will allow its customers to bank at any time, at any place. Halifax customers will be able to view balances and transactions, transfer funds and pay bills via mobile phones, laptops and other mobile devices. The first of these new services will be rolled out in Summer 2000 with SMS text messaging and WAP banking, followed by GPRS services in the Autumn. 

Halifax has recently announced its new Internet strategy, which includes the launch of its dedicated online banking service later in the year. For Halifax's 21 million customers, BT and BT Cellnet are developing one of the most comprehensive long-term strategic plans for the financial services market. The programme will enable the Halifax to offer its customers a full range of options for banking, and streamline and improve internal communications, develop marketing applications and flexible working initiatives. 

BT and BT Cellnet will supply the entire Halifax Group with the facilities for customers to bank at home or on the move. BT Cellnet's SMS (Short Messaging Service), WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Services) services will provide the Halifax with a wide range
of mobile services using these new and soon to be released technologies. BT Internet is currently developing multimedia and Internet banking services tothe Halifax based on its ADSL technology, and will allow the banking group to adopt new multimedia marketing techniques. BT has already been involved
in the development of Halifax's website.

BT Cellnet's WAP service, which was launched in January 2000, will provide full banking facilities for mobile devices to Halifax customers and will be further enhanced with the launch of GPRS. GPRS will provide an 'always on, 24 hour a day' service for access to banking and financial information with ISDN-like speeds to mobile devices such as PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and laptops, without the cost of being always connected. This can also deliver marketing applications which Halifax can direct at their customer base. These technologies will give Halifax a platform to deliver new banking services for the next ten years and beyond.

Peter Erskine, managing director of BT Cellnet, commented, "The face of banking is rapidly changing, and it is being driven by technology and mobile communications developments." 

James Crosby, chief executive of Halifax Group Plc., commented, "We areusing the new channels to build businesses, which directly attack the competition. Setting the pace in mobile banking in partnership with BT and BT Cellnet is a key part of this strategy.


BT Cellnet, the Mobile Internet market leader, is the UK's fastest growing mobile Internet company. Today it has around 7 million customers using its voice services and over 500,000 data users. Wholly owned by BT plc, the company is driving beyond the boundaries of voice communication to lead the Mobile Internet revolution. BT Cellnet launched the UK's first Mobile Internet Service Provider, Genie Internet (www.genie.co.uk) in 1999 and the UK's first commercial WAP service in January 2000. It will also be the first to introduce the new generation of very high-speed mobile data services using GPRS, or General Packet Radio Services, in Summer 2000.