Born between 1981 and 2005, Millennias are the next big market, and due in part to the explosion of new communications technologies—they are the first completely digital generation, with 86% of them using smartphones as their main tool. Consequently, their habits are very different from the preceding generations, and at 80 million strong, there are more of them than even baby-boomers.
After two years of flat growth, consumer mobile banking jumped from 19% to 30% in 2011, corresponding to a rise in Financial Institutions’ offering mobile banking and an increase in consumer smartphone ownership, according to Javelin Strategy and Research. The triple play–mobile banking via SMS text, mobile browser, and downloadable apps–is emerging as the new norm, with four out of five vendors now offering it. However, security remains a top concern, as almost half of consumers cite fear of security as the main reason they do not use mobile banking.
“Mobile banking, once considered a ‘nice-to-have’, is now a ‘must-have’ for Financial Institutions who want to stay competitive and meet growing consumer demand for this channel,” notes Mary Monahan, Executive Vice President and Research Director, Mobile, at Javelin. “Our research provides key insights into how industry trends will shape mobile banking and what steps FIs and vendors need to take to stay ahead of these changes.”
Vendors seeking market leadership will also need a thorough understanding of how to incorporate these trends into the development of their solutions. For example, the mobile banking industry is consolidating, with players bringing mobile technologies in-house. Tablet adoption by consumers is growing at a tremendous rate, and FIs and vendors will need to provide access to mobile banking specifically designed for tablet users. Javelin also identified those operating systems that vendors will need to support, as well as the mobile banking features that consumers want.
“The results are in,” said James Van Dyke, President, Javelin. “Fiserv, FIS and Sybase received the highest scores. Fiserv won “Best in Class”, while mFoundry won “Path to Mobility”. With all these industry changes, it will be interesting to see how vendors fare in next year’s report.”
The findings were published in Javelin Strategy & Research’s latest research report — “2011 — 2012 Mobile Banking Vendor Scorecard: Mobile Banking Has Moved from a “Nice-to-Have” to a “Must-Have” Channel” — analyzes best practices and top trends in this rapidly shifting industry and reveals the best mobile banking solutions available today. Javelin scored the offerings of 15 major vendors, using data from surveys conducted with more than 10,000 consumers and executive interviews with six financial institutions (FI). The report provides strategic guidance to FIs for development of their mobile banking strategies and selection of vendors and key insights on critical features and functionality for vendors when designing the next versions of their solutions.
Javelin highlights a number of trends which will significantly affect mobile banking for FIs, vendors, and consumers.
Selected Key Report Findings — 2011 — 2012 Mobile Banking Vendor Scorecard
Source: Business Wire
“In 2002, fewer than 200,000 people in Afghanistan had access to telephones. Today, some 15 million Afghans use mobile phones and a full 85 percent of the population lives within the combined network coverage of the four major telecommunications companies. This technological leap connects Afghans to each other and to the economy in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago,” the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Rajiv Shah said recently in Kabul when announcing three USAID grants for further technological innovations, totaling more than $2 million.
The wide availability of mobile phones opens up possibilities for finding new solutions to challenges that Afghans face every day. These three USAID grants aim to help create a mobile banking system that all Afghans could use.
The Afghan Education Minister recently highlighted the urgent need for mobile payments when a staff member of the Education Ministry was killed while transporting cash in northern Afghanistan to pay teachers. In fact, thousands of Afghan teachers had to wait months to get paid due to the difficulties and dangers of transporting money. “I am delighted that USAID is able to help seed a partnership between the Afghan Education Ministry and a mobile phone operator to begin paying teachers . . . thus ensuring that they get paid in time, and more importantly, that no Education Ministry employee loses his life for a duffle bag of cash,” Administrator Rajiv Shah said.
The second grant is designed to connect the new Afghan electricity utility with mobile phone billing and payment for electricity service. “Delivering electricity to all Afghans will require a revenue model that will sustain operations, motivate more public and private investment, and expand Afghanistan’s energy grid so that fewer communities live in the dark,” Administrator Rajiv Shah said.
The third grant funds a partnership of another telecommunications company with a micro finance consortium whose clients are predominantly women. “Running loan extensions and repayments over mobile phones significantly reduces the need for loan officers and clients to travel. This cost savings can be passed on to the customers, making credit more affordable,” Administrator Rajiv Shah concluded. “I am proud that United States Agency for International Development is able to help unleash Afghan innovation.”
Source: VOA News
AIB today announced the launch of its new mobile banking webdsite, which has been tailored specifically for use on smartphones. More than 650,000 of AIB customers actively use AIB Internet Banking and the bank has seen significant growth in the numbers of customers accessing their Internet Banking using their smartphones.
Services available on AIB Mobile Banking allow customers to:
*Accounts must be previously set up on AIB Internet Banking
AIB will shortly announce the launch of Mobile Banking apps for iPhone and Android smartphone users. The site and apps were developed in house by a specialist team in AIB. A multimedia communications campaign will be launched to support this initiative with online and social media forming a key part of this campaign.
According to Robert Mulhall, Head of Direct Channels, “The number of smartphones in Ireland is growing at a rapid rate. Customers are demanding that all service providers evolve with this trend to provide their services in a means that is increasingly convenient to them. Banks are no different. We know that our customers are already using their smartphones to access Internet banking while on the move. This development meets the needs of our customers now and gives them the convenience of banking at a time that suits them.”
Source: AIB
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Faced with growing competitive threats from non-traditional sources, such as alternative payment providers, banks around the world have aggressively swung their attention to emerging mobile platforms to defend their payments revenues, according to a new report from KPMG International.
Adding to the urgency, 84 percent of banking and financial services (FS) executives said mobile payments will have significant importance to their business within the next one to four years. Furthermore, 73 percent suggested that mobile payments would be mainstream within the next four years. [Read more…]
Research and Markets has announced the release of a new report, entitled “M-Banking Markets and Opportunities.”
Mobile banking refers to a client-server system that is specifically designed for mobile devices, allowing banking customers to use handheld devices to access their accounts, pay bills, authorize fund transfers, or perform other activities. Like many other m-commerce services, mobile banking services can be challenging and no single company has all the expertise required to develop and deliver compelling services on its own. This report evaluates the mobile banking ecosystem and mobile banking solutions including mobile payments, provides a SWOT analysis for Visa and competitors, analyzes solutions for Visa’s weak points, discusses mobile banking implementation, and evaluates the market, applications, and methods. [Read more…]
Fi-Mobile Inc. has announced the release of UniFI, a new mobile banking application platform that allows financial institutions to deliver and manage a branded mobile presence.
Designed to help credit unions and banks deliver a unified mobile banking experience to account holders and members, UniFI provides instant access to critical financial services and information so that customers can do their banking on the iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry devices, and any other browser-enabled smart device. [Read more…]
Developing a mobile banking channel for their corporate clients is a top priority for bankers, according to a recent survey by Fundtech. The results of the survey, taken among bankers on the topic of mobile banking, show that many bankers think it has the potential to become an important competitive differentiator. By far, the major concern is related to security and fraud issues.
Key Findings
The survey of 267 bankers was fielded in March and has the following key findings:
George Ravich, Chief Marketing Officer of Fundtech comments: “The results of the survey show strong interest in developing the mobile corporate banking channel. One interesting dichotomy was revealed: while only 15% of those bankers surveyed see mobile corporate banking as a revenue opportunity, our recent survey done in partnership with Aite Group revealed that 49% of corporate treasurers are willing to pay for such services. This suggests that banks may still not yet fully realize the business opportunity for mobile banking.”
Fundtech develops transaction banking solutions that automate activities such as payments, cash management, settlement, liquidity management, and the financial supply chain.
Source: Fundtech
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.