News Room

BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS, May 4, 2011 – Just one year after FirstCaribbean International Bank revolutionized the regional financial sector with mobile banking, the Bank has made yet another decisive step ahead of the competition by expanding the functionality of its mobile banking product.

For the first time anywhere in the Caribbean, mobile phones can be used to pay bills and transfer funds between third party beneficiaries, i.e. from one mobile banking customer to another.  These mobile banking options are being offered exclusively through FirstCaribbean’s Mobile Banking Bill Pay and Third Party Payment services.

In effect, customers at FirstCaribbean can meet utility, hire purchase and other monthly financial commitments, as well as transfer funds to other FirstCaribbean mobile banking customers, any time, any where, using any type of mobile phone.  Customers can register an unlimited number of third party beneficiaries and billers to their mobile banking account, as long as they are listed on FirstCaribbean’s Internet Banking service.

These new services are available with immediate effect in Anguilla, Antigua, British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, St. Kitts and the Turks and Caicos Islands.  Bill Pay and Third Party Pay are available in addition to the original capabilities of mobile banking, including the ability to make balance inquiries, transfer funds between accounts and set alerts to inform users when their accounts have reached minimum or maximum cash balances.

FirstCaribbean customers continue to enjoy mobile banking free of cost, with the only prerequisite being that they must be enrolled in the Bank’s Internet Banking service, which is also available without charge.

Chief Administrative Officer, Mahes Wickramasinghe, in expressing his satisfaction with the new offer stated, “We are truly excited about these two new additional features to our Mobile Banking service.  We believe that we have an excellent product that will help our customers save time by enabling them to “bank on the go”.

Managing Director Retail Wealth and Small Business Banking, Rolf Phillips also expressed confidence that their customers would appreciate these new mobile banking options and anticipated that the added value would lead to an increase in the adoption rates for the mobile banking product.  “These new payment features will be a boon for our clients across the region.  One of the key benefits of our Mobile Banking service is that you don’t need to have a smart phone to use it as it is text message-based.  We expect that a number of persons keen on this added convenience of banking on the go will gravitate to FirstCaribbean’s mobile banking as the leader in the market.”

Apart from being convenient and easy to use, FirstCaribbean’s Mobile Banking service is safe with stringent security measures in place to protect their customers’ financial information and details from third parties.  Text messages will only be sent to the mobile phone number that is registered with the bank by the customer, who must verify his/ her identity at the time of registration.  Moreover, account numbers are never sent to the mobile phone.

FirstCaribbean’s Mobile Banking service is free, however, SMS charges will be the same as what any customer would pay their cellular service provider for text messages via long and/ or short codes.  For further information visit www.firstcaribbeanbank.com or contact 1-800-744-3249 ( BVI, Cayman Islands & TCI) or 1-800-744-3243 (EC Islands).

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About FirstCaribbean

FirstCaribbean International Bank is the largest, regionally-listed bank in the English- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean, serving over 500,000 accounts in 17 markets through 3,400 staff across 100 branches and offices.

The bank offers a full range of market-leading financial services in Corporate Banking, Investment Banking, Treasury Sales and Trading, Retail Banking, Wealth Management, and Credit Cards.

FirstCaribbean is a member of the CIBC Group.

CIBC (TSX, NYSE: CM) is a leading North American financial institution serving clients in Canada and around the world. Through its distinct business lines, CIBC Retail Markets and Wholesale Banking, CIBC provides a full range of products and services to almost 11 million individual, small business and commercial banking clients and meets the financial needs of corporate and institutional clients. CIBC is rated A+/Stable/A-1 by Standard & Poor's.

For more information about FirstCaribbean, visit www.firstcaribbeanbank.com.