Accenture: Banks Be Warned-You’re This Close to Losing Customers to Mobi

There’s no doubt that customers of all stripes are eager to use more mobile options, and banking is no different. A recently-released study from Accenture, meanwhile, shows just how “desperate” users are for a better mobile banking option. They’re so desperate that banks are about “two APIs (application programming interfaces) away” from losing customers outright to mobile options.

The Accenture Future of Payments report put some numbers to the assertion that mobile payments are starting to take off, noting that 64 percent of consumers studied in the United States and Canada are planning to use a mobile wallet system of some sort by 2020. That’s up from just 46 percent right now, and that three years out.

This is good news for the current leaders, but bad news for banks. Right now, mobile wallet apps from technology firms and similar fintech operations have hit 49 percent of surveyed consumers, while those from banks have only reached 28 percent, a little better than half the number seen in tech-firm mobile wallet.

Worse, some currently in the banks’ market are prepared to jump ship; 23 percent of consumers were ready to switch to a digital wallet from a currently-established mobile banking app. Reasons behind this change most frequently cited were convenience and a more centralized way to consider financial options.

The Accenture study delivered the deathblow to banks by saying “The risk here for banks, considering the rote functionality of their mobile payments apps, is that aggregators will start to disintermediate banks in mobile payments by providing this increasingly sought after unified view of consumers’ finances. Banks are essentially two APIs away from losing a big chunk of their mobile app traffic.”

If that doesn’t hit banks like a frying pan to the face, nothing will. API development has been proceeding apace for years; those two APIs could be developed and released within a matter of months, potentially less. Banks must get their mobile platforms ready to go, and properly, or risk significant loss. The Accenture study presents it about as sharply as can be.

Many banks have already been working to narrow that gap, but they’re going to have to work quite a bit harder to come out ahead on this one.