Or a coveted stock is about to hit your strike price, but you're on a fourth-grade field trip with your child.
Or you're about to sign a check for the house of your dreams but wonder, did that last deposit get made?
In today's world, you'd probably pay Visa a late fee, miss out on your stock or race to the bank to cover your check. But in a wireless world, your Internet-enabled cell phone or personal digital assistant would allow you to handle such financial urgencies at once, no matter where you are.
Keeping situations like these in mind, banks, brokerage houses and communications companies are launching wireless financial services and offering deals they hope will lure more consumers into managing their money on the move. Still, technological, security and privacy issues remain, and acceptance is far from universal.
"Supply is there," says Edward Kountz, senior analyst at TowerGroup, a research and consulting firm. "The question is, where is the demand?"
Wireless financial offerings are still in their infancy, most experts agree. While a few pioneering institutions offered mobile services in the mid-1990s, most have launched their services in just the past two years, and the customer base remains small.
By the end of 2000, there were, by Kountz's estimate, about 500,000 American and Canadian users of wireless financial services, vs. nearly 3.9 million in western Europe and 4.8 million in Asia. In the U.S., users tend to be active securities traders, tech-savvy professionals and those who like the convenience.
But just as Automated Teller Machines and Internet banking gradually won over American consumers and the financial industry, most experts see the popularity of wireless banking and trading blossoming over the next few years.
