t may take time for financial business applications to catch up with consumer ease of use, partly because the business is more complex and the amounts at risk are far larger, but it does occur on a regular basis, especially in mobile.

Citi’s Transaction Services has launched Citi Supplier Finance Mobile which allows suppliers to inquire on the status of payments remotely from a mobile device. Once accessed from a phone or tablet, the user is prompted to enter some basic information about the transaction including region, reference numbers and transaction value.  The user is then able to drill down and receive additional information on the selected transaction, including the status of a payment in real time. 

“Citi continues to evolve our trade solutions to bring the mobile office to our clients and their suppliers,” said John Ahearn, global head of trade at the bank. “With this new capability, we are further extending the accessibility of our Supplier Finance platform, making it easier for both buyers and suppliers to obtain critical information about their transactions.”

Transaction services, never the sexiest part of banking, got some new respect as it provided steady earnings with low risk throughout the financial crisis. While it never generated the big wins — and big bonuses —  of investment banking, the transactions services group wasn’t responsible for driving Citi into the arms of the federal government for repeated rescues and guarantees either. 

New features in the mobile supplier app include real-time status inquiry for supplier finance payment and discount requests, invoice level information, filtering by functionality, by date, transaction type and reference numbers. It is available in nine languages including English, Portuguese, Italian, German, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Polish and French

Other mobile features and functionality allow entitled users to receive alerts and create and release batch payments for straight-through processing. It was developed by the Citi Innovation Lab in Dublin in conjunction with the CitiDirect technology team.