With the market saying 'no' to Nokia's Ovi Store, what do you think can be done to change this?I’ve been playing with LloydsTSB’s wickedly good mobile banking service. On a Samsung handset, no less.
The just released it today so if you’re a LloydsTSB customer, you’ll be able to keep track of your bank account and transfer money between accounts using their dedicated mobile application.
I’ll have more details and some screenshots shortly. In fact I think we’ll put it into the MIR Show for Monday.
Bank of America has been signing people up to its mobile banking service quicker than you can say Big Mac and fries - according to BoA, there are now one million active users doing their finances by mobile and over four million banking sessions taking place every month.
The bank says Los Angeles residents are the most prolific mobile bankers with most users falling into the Gen X or Gen Y bracket - two-thirds of mobile bankers are under 35 years of age. They’re also not just sticking to passive banking like checking their balances, four in ten are also paying bills with their phone.
I’d always assumed that mobile banking was a bit slow to take off because of security concerns (justified or not) around accessing cash over mobile, but it looks like it might just be a plain and simple case of the devices not being quite up to it. BoA says: “Apple iPhone, RIM Blackberry and Microsoft Windows Mobile devices are the most popular ones used by mobile banking customers.” It looks like mobile banking was just suffering along with every other website from phones that didn’t make browsing the user-friendly experience it should be.
Mobile banking is set to skyrocket, according to mobile analysts Juniper Research, with 816 million of us using mobile banking services by 2011, a tenfold increase on the 2007 figure. The analysts reckon that the annual number of global mobile banking transactions will rise from 2.7 billion in 2007 to 37 billion by 2011, while the average value of mobile transactions will double.
China/Far East region will have the greatest number of users of mobile banking services, followed by Western Europe and the Indian sub-continent, says Juniper, with all the newfound enthusiasm for mobile banking stoked by better consumer confidence.
Mobile banking seems to have been on the cusp of mass take-up for a number of years in the UK but never really quite tipped over into becoming one of those every day applications. Banks themselves don’t seem to be pushing it that hard - after all, if they can’t make money off it, and it’s an additional channel to promote, support and secure, what’s in it for them? Developing economies seem to be doing much more interesting things with mobile banking than developed ones - perhaps UK banks need to look overseas for inspiration.
