The good news, out of a recent survey released from the Federal Reserve banks of Richmond, Minneapolis, Boston, Dallas and Atlanta—which means a pretty wide swath of the United States—is that a growing number of banks are offering mobile banking options.
Fully 78 percent of banks, and credit unions too, were offering mobile banking in just 2014, and within a year or two from then, another 16 percent were set to join in. But this wide availability isn’t leading to strong customer uptake, and that means that just having mobile banking as an offering alone isn’t going to be enough to make headway in the market.
Indeed, the report went on; despite nearly 94 percent of institutions either having mobile banking or likely to have it by 2016’s end, just four percent of institutions could say that over half of retail customers were even enrolled in the first place.
Meanwhile, 80 percent of institutions noted that less than 20 percent were actually active users of such services. This means that banks and credit unions are keeping up with each other in offering the services, whether or not the customers were particularly interested.
So what’s keeping all those users from turning to mobile banking routinely? The institutions in question believe that it’s a mix of lack of awareness in general, and from those who are aware, concerns about security.
Smartphone usage in general, meanwhile, may play a factor; reports from ComScore suggest that fully 75.8 percent of the population of the United States over the age of 13 has a smartphone, meaning about a quarter of the country does not. However, reports suggest that this number is likely to continue rising, so the impact of technology on mobile banking may be reduced.
Additionally, use may be colored by which services are available. While most banks either offer or plan to offer balance checking, transaction history, bill payment options, and even the ability to transfer funds from one account to another, there’s much less plan for transferring from one bank’s accounts to another, changing account addresses, and international remittances.
So while there are services being offered, are these services anyone really cares about using?
When even something as simple as reordering paper checks is out of the question for 60 percent of responding firms, something’s amiss, and that’s what the report suggests may be the case. It’s one thing to offer mobile banking services, but these need to be the services that people want to use.
It’s not a matter of “if we build it, they will come,” but rather a matter of “do we have what the customer wants?” Yes, security and lack of awareness play a part in all this, but the bank needs to consider if it’s actually offering up a proposition anyone wants to work with.
Some changes are in order to the way banks view mobile banking, and when the offerings are in line with what the customers want, then it’s likely to be a more positive overall experience.