Midland Bank Plc, the HSBC Holdings Plc subsidiary, will launch the UK’s first venture into consumer TV banking next week on British Interactive Broadcasting Plc’s Open interactive TV service.
At first, the service is to be little more than glorified advertising. BiB charges sizable fees for Open ‘floor-space’ for a reason. Users will be able to access information about HSBC services, predominantly calculators for personal loans, car purchasing, and mortgages. Actual banking facilities such as bill payment, statements and transfers will become available at an unspecified later date.
Open is not scheduled to go live for another few weeks. When it does, it will offer e-commerce services from virtual outlets like Woolworths (CDs, videos) Iceland (frozen food) and Going Places (travel). HSBC will share its finance channel with the likes of Abbey National Bank and online share dealer E*Trade Inc.
But Open is not a way of accessing the internet with a television and remote control. There will not for the foreseeable future be a web-browsing option, although BiB will operate an internet-based email system immediately. Each service a user selects will connect the digital set-top box directly to the chosen company’s servers, via a telephone line. HSBC says this represents a massive improvement on the security of internet banking.
BiB is a joint venture between British Sky Broadcasting Plc, British Telecommunications Plc, HSBC and Matsushita Electronic Ltd. At first it will only be available through BSkyB’s digital satellite broadcasting service, but will be offered to terrestrial and cable digital operators in the future. Just as BSkyB will not be the exclusive broadcast company and HSBC is not the only bank on the service, users do not have to use BT’s telephony service to access Open.
