Banking by smartphone and tablet has become the leading way customers manage their finances, as mobile banking overtakes branches and the internet as the most popular way to bank, according to the British Banking Association.
New research from CACI for the BBA shows that customers will use mobile devices to check their current accounts 895 million times in 2015, more than the 705 million branch interactions. By 2020 they are forecasting that customers will use their mobile to manage their current account 2.3 billion times - more than internet, branch and telephone banking put together.
These findings are published alongside the second edition of the Way We Bank Now, a joint report by the BBA and EY, which reveals that UK customers had downloaded banking apps on 22.9 million occasions by the end of March this year - a rise of 8.2 million in just one year.
Customers moved £2.9 billion a week using banking apps in 2015 - up from £2 billion in 2014. At HSBC, only two percent of banking payments and transfers were conducted in a branch, while Barclays is measuring 1980 logins per minute to its mobile banking app.
The Way We Bank Now report also reveals that by March of this year there were:
- 9.6 million - log-ins to internet banking a day - a 10% increase on a year before
- 1.3 million - text message alerts sent by banks to their customers each day
- 43% - decline in telephone instructions by customers to their bank between 2008 and 2013
- 6% - decline in branch transactions across all banks in 2014
Anthony Browne, chief executive of the BBA, says: "The rapid take-up of apps and mobile banking appears to be a real game changer for the British public. It is vital that the Government invests more in 4G and high-speed broadband to ensure that as many people as possible can be included in the revolution that is sweeping through banking.”
The UK isn't the only market undergoing seismic upheavals, with Australian bank customers pegged as the fastest adopters of mobile banking globally, according to research from Bain & Co. The study reveals that 38% of Australian customers' interactions with their bank happened using a smartphone or tablet in 2014, up from 22% the year before. It is now the main way that consumers interact with their bank, overtaking the desktop, which slipped from 42% to 35% of customer interactions during the same period.