Seed Steps Up Its Mobile Banking Game for Small Businesses

October 25, 2024         By: Steven Anderson

If you went to the bank this morning, and everyone there seemed a little on edge, this might be why. They may not know about it, just kind of feel it lurking in the background, but this is the kind of thing that should unsettle banks everywhere. Seed recently announced plans to bring out a new line of mobile-based tools that will help give small businesses a leg up in mobile banking functions like cash management.

That alone would be bad enough, but Seed also mentioned results of a survey it took that shows it will have a market for such tools, and not from the banks. Over half of the 423 small businesses Seed surveyed said they didn’t have access to what they called an “…intuitive, simple mobile banking app”, and a further 65 percent said that their own banks didn’t offer either phone or app-based messaging support.

Worse, not even a third of banks could offer financial insights, and around a quarter offered advice on managing a small business. That’s actually not out of line; the potential legal ramifications of “bad advice” could be a problem for most any bank to take it on.

That opened up the floor for Seed to step in with its own mobile platform, offering that which banks could have but apparently never did: mobile bill payment, in-app support, and management options for documents, data, and even cash flow.

It’s a shock to see so few banks in this study were offering mobile banking tools, especially in this comparatively simple a degree. Why in the world would banks these days not offer what amounts to the basics of mobile banking? I’ve heard about banks that were shutting down branches to take better advantage of mobile banking operations; where was this survey taken, and what in the world is wrong with the banks out there? Somewhere, banks are leaving a lot of potential money on the table and turning quite a few customers away unsatisfied.

Still, this was clearly an opportunity for someone to step in, and Seed has struck while the iron was clearly hot. Let this be a lesson to the banks out there; when you won’t, someone else will.