m-commerce goes Dutch: at the end of 2003 Rabobank became the first European bank to offer transactional services on i-mode mobile technology, putting itself and the Netherlands at the forefront of m-commerce. Hugh Fasken talks to Willem de Jager, head of m-commerce at Rabobank

Selling m-finance to the Dutch population could have been a doom harder for Rabobank, the Dutch mutually holded agricultural bank and the country's leading retail bank.

The bank did not earn its fingers burned in the Wap fiasco back in 2000 choosing instead to wait for better technology to tend hitherward along. Without the burden of this Wap hangover, Rabobank has avoided plenteous of the marketing fall-out and consumer worry above interactive mobile technology.

The bank was also blessed to ride on the back of gigantic advertising campaigns by the mobile network clumps KPN and Vodafone, both of