New considerations for mobile banking strategies in Europe

comScore and Telefónica Germany announced the results of "Connected Europe" Study which highlights how smartphones and tablets are shifting media consumption in Europe. With regards to mobile banking, the study shows that over 20% of smartphone users in Europe accessed their bank accounts with their mobile devices and 12% used electronic payment services to pay for goods from their mobile phone.

With increasing smartphone and tablet adoption rates the financial services industry must prepare for significant disruption to the remote channel environment, particularly all-things digital (mobile, tablet, smart TV, etc.). Ubiquity and mobility have never before been so relevant, and it represents an enormous opportunity for financial institutions that can understand and leverage this change in behavior to their advantage; those who do not work to understand this emerging reality risk being left behind.

Key findings from the study, all of which must be considered by banks when formulating a mobile and digital channel strategy, include:

• Smartphones and Tablets are gaining on the PC. Mobile phones accounted for 65 percent of non-computer traffic, followed by tablets that generated more than 1 in 4 non-computer page views.
• Mobile Media is booming. 75 percent of smartphone users in the EU5 used mobile media in October 2011, an increase of 62 percent in the past year.
• The EU5 market is fragmented across ecosystems. Nokia, Google, and Apple are the key players in the European market for smartphones and tablets.
• Apple’s halo continues to expand with the iPad. Across the EU5, iPhone owners were 66 times more likely than the average smartphone user to have an iPad. 
• Mobile commerce is taking off and reshaping expectations for the retail industry. Mobile retail is one of the fastest growing phenomena amongst smartphone users with double or triple digit growth ratesacross European countries. Germany had the fastest growing (up 112 percent year on year) user base and witnessed the quickest adoption of emerging technologies, such as QR codes.