Mobile banking has been touted as the future of banking, and for the last couple of years some banks have been slowly rolling out mobile banking programs to test the waters.
According to a mobile banking report card from ABI Research Inc., which looked mobile banking services being offered by 29 of the largest banks in America, it’s a mixed bag as to overall mobile banking services, and there’s a long way to go before it becomes as ubiquitous as has been projected.
There were a number of factors the banks were graded on, including how many devices mobile banking could be performed on, how many types of service were offered, how well they were communicating the availability of mobile banking services and letting consumers know how secure mobile banking use was.
Also measured was the number of services the banks offered through a mobile device and if it was as versatile as Internet banking is at this time.
Banks which scored the highest – with either an A or a B+ were BB&T (NYSE: BBT), Eastern Bank, Fifth Third Bank (NasdaqGS: FITB), Northeast Bank (NasdaqGM: NBN), USAA, Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) with As, and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and Chase (NYSE: JPM) came in with a B+.
Taking all this into account, I’m not sure if any of this really matters at this time. There are a lot more important things to deal with in the banking industry and financial sector, and since mobile banking started in the U.S. about two years ago, it was right at the time when the recession started to hit and the housing crisis started, so mobile banking isn’t exactly at the top of banks’ priorities at this time.
Some large banks like HSBC, Citizens Bank, Comerica (NYSE: CMA) and KeyBank haven’t even began to offer mobile banking services at this time, and they probably won’t suffer much for it, as I haven’t heard much on consumers making big demands for it at this time. Consumers are concerned about keeping their homes and money, while paying down debt more than whether they can do banking on a mobile device.
This report card was an obvious attempt to bring mobile banking back on the radar, but it’ll take a much longer time to get it going in America than previously thought, and while it’ll be popular among younger people, until consumers start doing a lot more traveling, it won’t be as needed and important; one of the reasons it hasn’t been part of the banking conversation for some time.
With more people sticking close to home, there’s not much demand to do banking business while on the move, because being on the move has been cut back so much. When that resumes again, we’ll see a larger demand for mobile banking, and banks will respond by pursuing it much more aggressively.
