Getting Consumers Across The Mobile Banking Gap

Viktoria Holubniuk Blog April 11, 2018 | 0

Nearly 60 percent of American smartphone users have at least one financial services app installed, which represents an all-time high. Of those with mobile banking apps installed, 70 percent check those apps once per week and 16 percent check them once per day.

The penetration is there, as is consumer interest — but it is far from equally distributed across mobile banking uses. Some things customers are doing from their phones with enthusiasm.

Other things — not so much.

As it turns out, sixty-three percent of Americans reportedly prefer opening new checking accounts in person as opposed to using a mobile app or online interface, and 50 percent consider online banking “less legitimate” than doing business at a branch.

And that mindset — according to what Michelle Spellerberg, Alliant Vice President of Marketing & Digital Channels, told PYMNTS — is the mindset mistake that is keeping consumers bound to the brand, despite the fact that the concept is, in Alliant’s opinion, “on its way out.”

“I think if you look at the entire movement of the ecosystem — and the way that the entire ecosystem is moving away from cash — I think the death of banking by branch is a when, not an if. Digital payments are making phones into wallets, it’s easier to use a phone that cash to repay a debt because of P2P payments — consumers are even changing the way they are shopping in retail stores.”

The direction of the market, she said, is toward digital — and while she noted that the transformation isn’t happening overnight, and is unlikely to start unfolding that way, it seems clear to Alliant that the consumer need to handle financial transactions face-to-face will continue to drop away.

“If you look at the numbers, not just on how often people are using digital banking apps, and just look at how quickly online banking has spread in the age of mobile — that looks like the most logical conclusion,” she noted, saying that there is still a lot of inertia in the marketplace to overcome.