Fed Study: Mobile Banking, Deposit Use Growing Among Consumers (March 30, 2015)
More than half (51 percent) of mobile banking users in the U.S. had deposited a check using their mobile phones last year, up from 38 percent in 2013, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest study, “Consumers and Mobile Financial Services 2015.” Mobile deposit capture, or MDC, which enables consumers to deposit funds into their accounts by photographing checks with their smartphones, has been gaining momentum among financial service providers for the past several years.
The most common use of mobile banking among users of the service was to check account balances or recent transactions (94 percent). The second most common use (61 percent) was transferring money between a respondent’s own accounts, and nearly half reported making a bill payment using their bank’s online banking Website or app. The survey was conducted by online consumer research company GfK on Dec. 5-22, 2014, of nearly 3,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 and over.
Convenience was the most common reason respondents gave (35 percent) for adopting mobile banking. Thirty-three percent of consumers said having a smartphone was the main reason for using mobile banking. One-fifth of consumers said their adoption of mobile banking was tied to their bank starting to offer the service. While 87 percent of the population has a mobile phone, similar to 2013, 71 percent of consumers reported having a smartphone last year, compared with 61 percent a year earlier.
When adopting mobile banking, consumers have concerns about the technology’s security, according to the report. Despite the growth in consumer usage, one-fourth of all mobile phone users reported that consumers’ personal information is “somewhat unsafe,” 19 percent said the services are “very unsafe,” 7 percent said it is “very safe” to use mobile banking and 15 percent of mobile phone users did not know how safe it is to use mobile banking.
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