While Android has made huge strides against the iPhone in terms of smartphone usage,according to Aviva Litan, an Analyst at information technology research and advisory company  Gartner, Inc., banks are more comfortable with the iPhone for their banking apps. And even then, she writes, the mobile apps that banks are releasing “offer limited functionality and don’t enable high-risk transactions such as adding new payees for bill payment or new accounts for fund transfers.”

In a recent blog post, Litan writes:

“Most of the financial institutions I work with or use have released iPhone apps but have stayed away from other mobile operating systems and platforms. I asked a few banker colleagues the reason for this, and they told me that; the iPhone development environment is easier to work with, the applications are better controlled in terms of distribution (using the iTunes store), and that they didn’t have the security confidence or appetite yet to develop mobile apps for at least ten operating systems or handset versions (e.g. various Blackberry versions, Symbian, Android) that they would need to support to reach more of their customer population.”

More via Gartner.