The partnership allows customers of Bank of America to request account information by SMS as well as a text message based fraud prevention service. The new mobile banking service was also utilised by Bank of America during the recent volcanic ash cloud disruption as a means of keeping in contact with its customers abroad.

The mobile banking text service from Oxygen8 acts as a gateway to information between Bank of America and its card holders. Customers can initiate requests for account information, including balance, payments and transactions via an SMS request to a dedicated mobile short-code number or to a more traditional mobile should customers prefer to take advantage of any text messages included within their mobile plan. The service is available across the full range of credit cards managed by Bank of America which includes more than five million customers.

Phil Weston, Head of Mobile Services at Bank of America explains, "As the market evolves with new and improved technology, our customers' expectations change too. Customer research has shown that people want far greater choice of how and when they obtain account information. Through mobile messaging, the web and voice recognition services, we are investing heavily in meeting these customer demands."

Weston continues "We recently carried out a review of the market place in search of a strategic mobile messaging platform for our European operations. The review concluded that the Oxygen8 platform was the most flexible, scalable and functionally rich solution in the market place. Oxygen8 provided most of the core functionality we needed as a standard component of their solution and were also able to undertake custom development speedily, enabling us to launch new features and services more quickly and easily moving forward."