Mobile Banking
Posted by George Pasley on July 24, 2007
There is an article on Bank Technology News about the adoption of mobile banking. According to Celent’s analysis, “within three years, mobile banking should be mainstream, reaching 35% of the online banking households.” I agree with that assessment. What I have a problem with is the reasoning behind the conclusion.
Because half of all calls into banks’ customer service centers are made with cell phones, Celent sees a natural transition into making “simple transfers” and balance checking. I don’t think that just because half of the calls are made from cell phones, customers will naturally adopt to mobile banking. Whenever I use my cell phone to call a business, it’s for privacy purposes or I plan to call while I’m traveling. It’s more for convenience than anything else. For most of the customers that I have talked to that used a cell phone to call the bank, this seems to be the same for them also. In the US, there is almost one cell phone for every two people. It’s only natural that half the calls coming in are made on a cell phone.
The article also talked about how 90% of the under-25 age group has a phone with data capabilities. I tend to think that’s mostly for text messaging and IM. If you check the over-25 age group, you’ll probably find that most of them have data capabilities also. Most of the phones on that market today have data capabilities. That’s like comparing the number of phones that have a color display with those that don’t.
As I mentioned before, I agree with the three year adoption prediction. However, I think mobile payments and better phones will be the driving forces behind mobile banking. The problem is it’s beginning to look like banks/credit unions will be cut out of the mobile payments market. Also, mobile banking is seen as a novelty right now. Yes, there are people using it, but most people in the US don’t want to use their phones to go online. Apple’s iPhone may help change that, however. I think it will take the other phone vendors adopting similar interfaces for mobile web applications to take off. Once this happens, then mobile banking and payments will see the adoption rate steadily rise.
