The ever evolving world of mobile banking

by. Danny Payne

I tend to shy away from dedicating a blog post to mobility.  But I can’t shy away from the fact that mobile is trending.  In a post I did last year, I wrote about internet banking, mobile banking, and everything in between.  I talked about the idea of tablets revolutionizing what we recognize as mobile banking.  So in this post, I will stay with that theme and also focus on why more people are using mobile and why people will keep using mobile.  And I promise I won’t overuse the word innovation or innovative while I try to describe the ever evolving world of mobile banking.

No surprises here, we live in an on-demand world.  “I need to look really quickly…” “This will only take a second…” “Let me check my phone…”  “I think there’s an app for that…”

Financial institutions large and small are drawn into the same demand for mobility.  It starts with the need for fast and easy access to balances and cleared checks/debits and quickly moves to bill pay, mobile deposit, and mobile personal financial management.  And it seriously starts happening that fast.  Am I the only person that remembers a not too distant past where Chase was running ads for text alerts for your account balance?  That’s right SMS text alerts.  Text it with me – OMG! That was so 2010.  Now we are recreating internet banking on a mobile device.  As soon as you know it, you (the FI) have purchased a full suite of mobile products while your customers were asking you for the ability to see their account activity on their mobile device.  Now don’t read this the wrong way, all of the bells and whistles are important.  Those services are what creates that “sticky” environment I am going to refer to a little later.  But as a buyer, you need to understand it isn’t as simple as saying, “I need to get mobile banking turned on.”  It is complex and it’s always changing.  There are startups everywhere in the mobile banking space.  And remember, mobile is more than your fancy phone.  You have to think about all those tablet devices and the real estate they provide for your users.  When picking a mobile product, you want to make sure you have a slick tablet app too!  And do you focus your decision on the better tablet app or phone app?  In my humble opinion, you better spend time on both.

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